Hamid Mir

On Dec. 11, Taliban government forces in Afghanistan shelled a town just across the border in Pakistan, killing seven Pakistani civilians. Pakistan responded in kind, killing one Taliban fighter and injuring 10 Afghans. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the “unprovoked shelling” by Afghan forces. On Dec. 15, the two sides exchanged artillery fire across the border, killing at least one Pakistani civilian and wounding 15 others. Pakistan and the Taliban are virtually at war.

It’s time for Pakistan to accept that its decades-old Afghanistan policy has failed. While the world’s attention has focused on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the violence in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan has gone underreported — even though the potential for a serious catastrophe grows by the day.…  Seguir leyendo »

After months of intrigue, Pakistan finally has a new army chief. The job is going to Lt. Gen. Asim Munir, a former head of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the powerful military intelligence agency. Many Pakistanis breathed a sigh of relief at the news, which has — at least for the moment — warded off fears of a fresh political crisis. The reason: In recent months, ex-prime minister Imran Khan has been pushing for a confrontation with the senior army leadership that some feared might lead to the army announcing martial law. For the moment, at least, that threat appears to have been averted.…  Seguir leyendo »

On the evening of Nov. 3, former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan narrowly escaped death. An assailant attacked him at a political march, wounding Khan in the leg, killing one other person and injuring 14 more. Khan survived — but now Pakistan’s democracy may be facing new threats to its survival.

Khan is the third former prime minister to have faced an assassination attempt. The country’s first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was shot in 1951; a suicide bomber killed Benazir Bhutto in 2007. They were targeted in public rallies, but Khan was luckily only lightly injured.

In the months before the attack, Khan himself repeatedly warned that he would be targeted by an assassin, citing a conspiracy cooked up by his political opponents.…  Seguir leyendo »

Pakistan has just turned 75. The anniversary should be a cause for celebration, but also for serious self-criticism. Many Pakistanis are fond of citing our achievement of becoming the world’s first Muslim nuclear power. But how are nuclear weapons supposed to save Pakistan if our institutions are falling apart? The army, of course, remains strong. But our parliament, judiciary and media are becoming weaker by the day.

It is a matter of shame that four military dictators ruled Pakistan for more than 32 years. Civilian prime ministers — 29 of them — have ruled the country for 43 years. No elected prime minister has completed a full five-year term.…  Seguir leyendo »

Back in 2007, my colleague Musa Khankhel and I were reporting in the Swat Valley, a remote part of northwest Pakistan’s tribal areas where elements of the Pakistani Taliban had just seized power. The militants noticed us when Musa started to film the hoisting of a Taliban flag on the roof of a local police station. Taliban fighters arrested us and took us to their headquarters. Here I encountered Muslim Khan, a militant leader who made his criticisms of the Pakistani army’s counterterrorism operations in American-accented English. (Musa, who knew him, explained to me that “Muslim Khan had spent many years in Boston”.)…  Seguir leyendo »

Imran Khan, the 19th prime minister of Pakistan, has just plunged the country into an unprecedented constitutional crisis. Over the weekend, facing a parliamentary no-confidence vote that was set to remove him from office, Khan decided to sweep the pieces off the board by dissolving the National Assembly itself. His 18 predecessors failed to complete their five-year terms, most of them removed by the army or the courts. In contrast, this new crisis is entirely of Khan’s own making.

Yet I believe that, despite Khan’s attempts to subvert constitutional procedures, the country’s democratic institutions will prevail. The Supreme Court is deliberating over a solution to the impasse Khan has created, and the judges have a great opportunity to show that rule of law and the supremacy of the constitution offer the best solution to our problems.…  Seguir leyendo »

Imran Khan has always portrayed himself as the savior of Pakistan. He has often claimed that a country borrows a lot only if its leaders are corrupt. Pakistanis still remember him saying that he would rather kill himself than beg for loans.

But that isn’t how he’s acted since he became prime minister in 2018. In the three years since then, he’s broken all previous records on borrowing ($40 billion). Now, his opponents are callously demanding that he should honor his words and end his life because he has surrendered the financial sovereignty of Pakistan to the International Monetary Fund. Khan appointed a former IMF official as the head of the central bank, and now the IMF has drastically curtailed the Pakistani government’s control over the bank as well.…  Seguir leyendo »

An independent judiciary is one of the crucial pillars of any genuine liberal democracy. Here in Pakistan, a new scandal has ignited a firestorm of controversy precisely because it is reminding us that our judicial branch can make no claim to independence. Our country’s senior judges have intervened in politics again and again throughout history.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan has disqualified sitting prime ministers many times. The judges even decreed the hanging of one prime minister during the reign of a military dictator. There was no public outcry against the judiciary’s dubious actions back then. But society is changing.

On Nov.…  Seguir leyendo »

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan seems more willing to talk to terrorists blamed for killing thousands of Pakistanis, including security personnel and schoolchildren, than sit down with his political opposition.

He was absent from a five-hour, closed-door special meeting of the parliamentary committee on national security on Monday because he probably didn’t want to shake hands with his nonviolent rivals. Why is he digging a big hole for himself?

Chief of Army Staff Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa and Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, the director general Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), have informed parliamentarians from the government and the opposition that the new Taliban regime in Afghanistan was facilitating talks with the banned group Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).…  Seguir leyendo »