Some years ago, when relative stability returned to Waziristan after much mayhem and violence, I visited friends in the region. QAU lads.

The idea was to see Waziristan for the first time (I had only seen North Waziristan once but that was during the war when..

🧵🧵 ...much of the place was abadoned and razed to the ground.

A friend from QAU whose wedding we couldnt attend earlier due to the peak insurgency insisted that we visit now that things were kind of not chaotic.

So we went all ghruna ghruna Waziristan..

I have this cousin. Not very religious but he had this opportunity to go on the Hajj as a state guest of the Saudis. The kind where they give you royal treatment with exclusive luxury access to the Haram Sharif from the royalty pavilion.

For those who do not know, every year .. ...big wig Pakistanis in position of power go on these super luxury Hajj expeditions offered by the Saudis as part of their diplomatic charm offensives for Muslim allied states. Short hajjs for the VIPs like a week or so.

The man flat out refused to go. His boss went.Cousin said

A House Divided.

For the ex-military Veteran Babay, Imran Khan is a symbol, embodying everything they have always believed in and got indoctrinated about: hatred against the civilian world of corrupt politicians of the old order of Bhutto, Zardaris, Walis, Bizenjos et al. This is why they were so invested in Project Imran Khan which began in 2011, and it took a lot of hard work and behind-the-scene manipulation, engineering and canvassing by multiple chiefs and Dgs to get to 2018.

Only for the company then to disown him in 2023 and go back to

Faisal Qureshi is the quintessential Pakistani Celebrity.

Born-again lifestyle-liberal-but-conservative-on-the-inside-and-conservative-for-social-and-commercial-expedience who spend their days and nights in what mazhab considers to be a sinful life of decadence and gunaah o ...khurafaat of the sleazy sin-filled world of show-biz, (and probably their nights drinking and partying, which by the way is fine with me, but not with Mazhab).

Only then, to turn up the next morning, to milk religion on an Aftar show for TRPs or go after the trans people.

Question: How do you go from defending the COMPANY for decades (Mush/Zia/estab lovers walked over to PTI),gaslighting marginalized ethnic groups & minorities,mocking their existential perils,calling them sellouts of RAW,NDS & West to calling the same people "sUPoRtRz of F@sCism"? The children of lesser god of the peripheries of this country have been warning you about the transgressions and arbitrary abuse of power, about the use of their land and their land as mere pawns in dangerous larger games being played on some delusional chessboard in Pindi,

IK wants the elections, and I think it is a fair call. Elections should be held in their constitutionally stipulated time period and changing these goalposts mid-game sets dangerous precedents for the future

But would elections really solve his problem?

I DOUBT IT.

Thread Here's his problem.

He belongs on a container or a Jalsa stage where he is at his belligerent best delivering fiery speeches, rabble-rousing and RAGING AGAINST THE SYSTEM, and, inspiring others to do so as well.

Took him a while but he is now DARN GOOD AT IT!

Nope

May Allah give all Pakistanis opportunity to travel the world/get to see,interact & talk to the superior "diaspora" so they can see for themselves that diaspora folks r not the hill to die on & so they can come back with a sense of appreciation 4 those grinding it out here.

https://twitter.com/WajSKhan/status/1638225729564319755

We should be grateful for the money they send, but that is about it.

"Fixing the country" is not their mandate,nor are they qualified for it, and the lenses they see the country through are crooked youtubers, idiot box cable tv channels, conspiracy theorists & "influencers".

Just heard the Anwar Maqsood and Mahira Khan clip, and I think the whole thing is very mean-spirited.

The conversation, with crowds jeering on when two women are lampooned, panders to a cheaper, baser luccha-bazari popular awami instinct that modern Urdu humourists tend to do. And so, if you do not like Maryam NS or Mariyum A, and your politics is diametrically opposed to theirs, IT IS FINE, but they have supporters to, and you then have to cop the heat and criticism from them.

Mariyum Aurganzeb may not be the perfect women but from what I remember,

Insafis across the country using the same language and slogans as those they mocked, jeered at, and gaslighted - "the Resistance" - of PTM, Baloch dissenters, Punjabi civil and human rights campaigners, Muhajir identity activists. How the tide turns is quite humbling. Manzoor Pashteen was called Gashteen. Ali Wazir, a traitor scum of the earth. Mohsin, an NDS operative. Ahmed Noorani, larkee k maamon. Matiullah Jan, a Kakul drummed-out. Baloch missing boys, RAW agents. Hamid Mir, Absar Alam staged their own shootings.

Patwar-dom really messed up on the narrative on Zaman Park with their oh-these-savages-are-too-violent-to-be-local-Lahoris-so-they-have-to-be-savages-hired-from-up-north TAKE.

Not only did they screw up but also doubled down on it after backlash. YES, there were people from up north, but that is because IK remains popular in KP and a lot of these people were genuine workers who believe in IK (regardless of how the rest of us feel about it); and YES folks like Gandapur had to pay for logistics to get workers to Lahore, but

عمران خان مزید وزیراعظم رہتے تو ملک نہ رہتا تحریک انصاف ملک کیلئے خطرناک تھی
جنرل قمر باجوہ

Bajwa & IK were a match made in heavens: two narcissists with giant egos obsessed with grandoise ideas of self-importance & destiny.

Their collision was inevitable & unavoidable. Like the truism about how there cant be two Talwars in one neeyam. There had to be only one Bajwa and one IK.

Two egoistic men with god complexes, uncurable narcissism and a sense of legacy and personal destiny are always a perfect recipe for diasaster.

Dear KP.

Hear me out on this. Bear with me.

Without Zia, Pindi, Cold War, petro-dollar Salafiism,CIA,and Deobandiism, there would not have been any Taliban but they are here and a reality we have to live with—a monster we have to slay to survive, whether we're up for it or not. The choice has always been between staying quiet and learning to bleed by a thousand cuts (like this in Police Line Peshawar) in our Afpak (ex-fata, settled dists) region VERSUS speaking up (which involves instant death and harm). Incidents like Police Lines won't stop.

This is precisely why the young generation on campuses are sick of the ANP. This "comrade" has a whole thing going on on tiktok where he goes around campus being a prick, committing acts of vandalism, hooliganism and just plain arsehattery. Classical L of a saddar saib.

https://twitter.com/AimalWali/status/1606368685978959872

Campus leaders have actually played a huge role in making sure that newer generations of Pashtuns move on from the ANP. Nobody really has time for charsiyan, neem-kooni badmaashaan, and small-time crooks.

They get away with their small-time hooliganism because ANP leadership

By december 2014, some 40k deaths were still not enough for us to form a national anti-taliban consensus; for us to realize that they are evil; that, they "are not our brothers"; that they are not fighting a holy war for liberation but only unleashing a dogma of terror in the ...name of religion, and that they do not have a place in our ranks or of the civilized world.

The Taliban always had their enablers, sympathisers and apologists in our ranks, in our media, our clergy, our politics, our academia,in our online spaces. These included not just the

The story is familiar.

It starts in the mountains in the North West where frightened lesser children of God and Pakistan run from pillar to post ringing alarms about the return of bearded terror guised as "good assets". They are terrorised. Forced to leave homes and take.. refuge in mainland Pakistan. They stir trouble in univ campuses,organize press conferences,write long FB posts, run twitter campaigns, inform mainland Pakistan about the terror that lurks in the darkness.But mainland Pakistan has its political circuses,its memes and viral issues.

This argument that the West (Anglo Saxons world in particular) is somehow morally and ethically superior and therefore more conducive to imaandari is just drivel. Look at some of the namoonay they have just churned up:

-Trump
-Boris
-Farage
-Bannon
-Alex Jones
-MAGA idiots And that too after a couple of centuries of democracies.

The thing about politics is that there will always be crooks and con artists among MPA and MNA all over the world. What is important is for the system to have institutions, regimes and processess that work as course-

The yahan-democracy-nahi-chal-sakti argument has been around since Ayub.

All neo-despots, proto-fascists populists find democracy frustrating, a real pain in the arse because the system demands so much from you: bardasht, tolerance, accomodation, co-existence with opposition. In a democracy who just have to suck it up and learn to live with those who you do not like. That is the key. Without this bardasht there is, and cannot be any democracy. This is why populists civilian demogogues (Trump, Modi, Putin, Orban) consider democracy "corrupt".

ATC judge saab throwing a tantrum on motorway and having policemen who stopped him from using the motorway during fog hours suspended is just an illustration of how post lawyers-movement,both the judiciary and bars have amassed power and turned into little tyrannies of their own. With Iftikhar Chaudhary and his nexus with Geo and other media houses judges abandoned the old adage(that a judge should speak through his judgement)and obtained tremendous optics power and nuisance value.

Now they've become a djinn of their own & won't go back to their bottle.

Elite sheeleet controversy popping up on my TL for some reason.

Nothing wrong in being elite. You dont have to hide it or pretend that you are not. What is not cool though is to look down upon those who are not, have a sense of entitlement about it and have a lack of... ...compassion for those born in less privileged circumstances. Not your fault you were born rich so you dont have to downplay it but what you do need to be aware of, perhaps, is that generational wealth and privilege in this country is often not legit (your ancestors snitched on

Outgoing COAS is getting a barrage of abuse,scorn and vitriol in the wake of his departure from some leaders,intellectual wings & troll farms. This is probably karma for some of his choices.

The Hybrid Regime project (the main objective of which
🧵

thread was to clean the Augean Stables of old politics of the traditional parties and usher in a new era with a new set of fresh, cleaner outsiders) was set in motion, way before him, as early as 2011, but was stalled by the TTP insurgency and exigencies of geopolitics.

I am in my 30s and I think I am old enough to retire.

The only problem though is that I don't have any plots in DHA (or in Regi, or in Hayatabad, or even Board, Nasir Bagh, Tahqal),no zarraii araazi, no commercial plaza.

I can totally see why some of these guys want to retire. I mean, if I even had half of these things, or some kind of generational wealth with a half-decent stream of incoming coming in, I wouldn't want to give a shit about any 9-5 job.

Would have popped some mashroobat on my farm-house and written my magnum opus or some shit.