Two weeks before Pakistan's general elections on May 11, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended that Washington designate Islamabad as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) with regard to the freedom of religion enjoyed by all citizens. The USCIRF says, among the countries...

On May 1, 2013, a full-page ad in Pakistan's Dawn newspaper read: "My Dear Pakistanis, have you thought why PPP, ANP and MQM are targeted?"

The ad was referring to three secular political parties, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), the Awami National Party (

For an unstable and fragile country like Pakistan, next month's general elections are important. But they will not necessarily resolve many of the country's outstanding problems.

For instance, none of the mainstream political parties, including the secular groups, has promised to eliminate or at least enervate the influence of...

A decade after their partnership in the war on terrorism, the United States and Pakistan are still uneasy to describe each other as trusted allies. Both the countries find little common ground to further engage as close partners. The future of the relationship looks uncertain as the United States prepares...

Pakistan's two mainstream political parties, the Pakistan People's Party (P.P.P.) and the Pakistan Muslim League (P.M.L.-Nawaz), agreed to appoint renowned journalist Najam Sethi as the caretaker chief minister of the country's largest province of the Punjab. Earlier, the two parties had nearly...

In a televised address to the nation on Sunday, Pakistan's outgoing Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf congratulated his fellow citizens for the "historic" completion of five years of uninterrupted democracy. While the Pakistanis know that they will be voting in mid-May to elect a new government,...

Pakistan's former military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, is ending his four-year old self-imposed exile on March 24th by traveling back to the country's largest city of Karachi in order to participate in the upcoming general elections tentatively scheduled for May, 2013. Musharraf had seized power in...

Working with Sharks, a compelling account of a leading Pakistani gender activist, Dr. Fouzia Saeed, against sexual harassment at the workplace, was released in the United States on March 8 on the occasion of the International Women's Day. When a slightly different version of the book...

"A pack of lies" is Pakistan army's favorite defensive phrase whenever it is blamed for committing human rights abuses or covertly sponsoring Islamic extremist organizations. On December 13, 2012, the Pakistan army described an Amnesty International report, The Hands of Cruelty, as "a pack of lies"...

A Pakistani Muslim scholar with Canadian nationality has announced to transform Islamabad into "the world's biggest Tahrir Square" on January 14th ahead of this year's upcoming general elections. Dr. Tahir-ul-Qadri, a cogent public speaker, has made an abrupt but a robust comeback in Pakistan's politics after...

Pakistan has announced a reward of 50 million rupees (approximately $520,000) for anyone with information about people involved in a failed plot to assassinate a renowned television journalist last week in Islamabad, the nation's capital.

Geo Television, Pakistan's first 24/7 private news channel, said Hamid...

At least two journalists, one full-time and a part-time, have been killed in Pakistan's restive southwestern Balochistan province in the past one week. Unidentified armed men carried out both the murderous attacks in the Pakistan-Iran border district of Panjgur.

The attackers managed to flee after killing the journalists while...

It is misleading to solely describe the Taliban as a political movement. They, in fact, constitute a mindset. The problem with identifying them as a political movement is that it causes confusion. By restricting the definition of Taliban to a bunch of Islamic fanatics who wish to gain political power...

The sectarian war in Pakistan between militant Sunni and unarmed Shia Muslims is turning uglier by the day. A bomb blast targeting Shia pilgrims on September 18 in southwestern Balochistan province killed three people and also injured security guards who were officially assigned to protect the pilgrims from...

I heard of Salman Rushdie for the first time in 1988 as a five-year old boy. I learned about him from my mother. It was the year Rushdie had published the controversial Satanic Verses. The book had ignited riots across the Muslim world. Since...

An extraordinary 10-day visit of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances to Pakistan, taking place from September 10 to 20, has left the country's right-wing political leaders and nationalist media utterly paranoid. They fear that once the barely told story of

Last weekend's arrest and imprisonment of Rimsha Masih, an 11-year old Christian girl, by Pakistani authorities in the nation's capital, Islamabad, on charges of blasphemy, is deeply alarming. The girl, whose mental stability is doubtful, will certainly face death sentence according to the Pakistani law if...

On August 14, the government of Pakistan deliberately suspended mobile phone service for millions of subscribers in the country's largest province of Balochistan. Ironically, it was Pakistan's Independence Day and the citizens were supposed to enjoy their freedom. The government restricted phone calls and text messages in an...

A new report called "Challenges for Independent News Media in Pakistan" by the Washington-based Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) says physical safety is the number one concern of journalists working in Pakistan. Declared as the world's deadliest place for reporters for the past two consecutive...

In an extraordinary institutional confrontation, Pakistan's Supreme Court says the country's paramilitary forces should stop human rights abuses in the country's largest province of Balochistan or face prosecution. For more than two months, Chief Justice Ifthakar Mohammad Chauhdary and two other judges have been hearing a...