---Why ANP lost and future of ANP?----

For ANP there have only been lows and lows since 2013. What happened in this election too can be said to be somewhat shaped by the shock-trauma of 2013.

#thread What happened in 2013 totally changed the political landscape of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. A generation of leaders and committed workers was wiped out, a new narrative blaming all problems of the province and Pashtuns on ANP was state-sponsored and

As I sat in the taxi, he handed me a piece of paper written in English and asked for it to be translated. The paper was from a school asking the parent to see the kid’s results and to guide the child. It was for his kid. Upon asking he said that his son goes to KG in Peshawar Model School, one of the top schools of the city. The school was expensive and he has to take extra hours to give the school’s fee. I asked, “Why such an expensive school?” And then there was a stream of how the ‘ordinary’ humans, those written off from every policy,

Is stoning women sanctioned by Sharia? A thread

Of the most brutal of Taliban’s regime acts is stoning and the ignorance of calling it Islamic. The context of what’s sanctioned in Islam is historical and is missed totally by the modernist fundamentalists. Ayesha (R.A.), the wife of Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.) was accused of illicit affair with a Sahabi on a campaign. This pained the prophet and the Muslim community then, and the Munafiqeen who had spread the rumor rejoiced. This historical event is called Incident of Ifk. To answer this particular

Taliban is not a monolith. This structural fact was one of the significant factor, among other external ones, for th success of Taliban, and is the most important to understand the future. The central command has a moral authority and legitimacy but seldom they have the ground control. The reason being they were faraway from the fighting all these 20 years, mostly hidden away safely in their safe havens in Pakistan. The mid-level Taliban commanders navigated their alliances, revenue streams and operational matters. Drugs, extortion and smuggling

First and foremost, the discourse that the Afghan forces withered away over just two weeks of fighting should be dispelled. US and Nato handed over combat missions to the Afghan forces on 8 Dec, 2014. For seven years, Afghan forces were fighting Taliban, ETIM, Al-Qaeda, TTP, Jundullah and many others. Since the Doha deal, for the last two years, the Afghan forces were holding all of them back, with only minimal air and tactical support from the US. The last two weeks were two years, at-least, in the making. This lighting downfall was the result of

Taliban were never ‘localist’. Their aims and agenda were always global. Having seen them evolve firsthand their ideology can be anything but not internationalist. Mullah Fazlullah, a very local Taliban commander then, used to clearly express his plans for conquering Swat, then Peshawar, then Islamabad, then Delhi and so on. The local Taliban who didn’t have exposure to anything outside of Swat, excepting commanders at the top, were totally sold-up on that idea of global Jehad. It is a serious naivety on the part of the US imperialist machine to think

This independence day of Pakistan should be a day of mourning for all conscientious citizens of the country. Today neighboring Afghanistan is on the verge of total darkness at the hands of maniac beasts that were nurtured, safeguarded and supported by this state for 21 years. This state has blood of hundreds of thousands on its hands and tens of millions can be pushed to live in bestial darkness forever because of the hatred of the Pakistan state and those living on Pakistaniat for an independent and strong Afghanistan. Yes, the incompetence and

#thread
As Eid-ul-Azha nears the criticism (read that as disgust in some cases) at the ritual sacrifice of animals pours in. While, the intention for alternate sacrifice and charity are all good, even they miss the social point of a ritual. Religious and social rituals originate to fulfill a social purpose, and survive because that social purpose is still there to be filled. That social purpose in this case is transcending, albeit for a few days, the pangs of hunger and often the desire to have a festivity filled with food. Meat still is far away from

That TTP is just a subsidiary of Taliban in Afghanistan was a common knowledge. But that was denied publicly by the Pakistan's security establishment to achieve result of the end-game. Now that the end-game has arrived, which was to keep Taliban intact and in strong blackmailing power at-least, if not outright capable of taking over Kabul, the fear that TTP would become alive is palpable. It still is the time for the Pakistan's army to think that it is not 1995. If there is a Taliban's rule, or share in power, in Kabul, there will have to be TTP, with

In this madness imposed by Mullahs on our TV screens and in our midst for their own profits I am missing upright Maulanas like Maulana Hasan Jaan Shaheed. He was assassinated in Ramzan in 2007, most probably because of his anti-suicide bombing fatwas and his sermons against extremism and terrorism. He was the Imam of Masjid-e-Darwaish in Peshawar and had the Madrassa there. Masjid-e-Darwaish is wall to wall neighbor with the biggest church in Peshawar, St. Michael's Cathedral. The minarates of the Masjid throws its shadows to lawn of the church and