Ali Ahmed Rind

Support for Osama bin Laden is once again on public display throughout Pakistan. On July 18, Karachi‘s most popular pro-jihad morning newspaper, Daily Ummat, published a rather remarkable story suggesting a divine role in bin Laden’s survival. ”Osama bin Laden is in Afghanistan at the directive of Prophet Muhammad,“ the......

The car bombing that killed 14 people and wounded three dozen others outside of the U.S. Consulate‘s Office in Karachi got most of the attention last week. But two days earlier, a little-known crime occurred that sheds light on the current state of chaos in Pakistan. An inmate shot and......

On the street corners of Karachi, the talk is of war. How it’s inevitable, how our leaders are vowing to teach the enemy a lesson. “What do you think, will India cross over the Line of Control?” I hear someone ask a friend. “No, it will dare not. Pakistan has......

President General Pervez Musharraf is losing control of his country. The Sunday-morning grenade attack on a church along Diplomat Row is the latest telling example. It’s one thing for Musharraf to announce to the international community, as he did months ago, that he was cracking down on terrorists. But the......

From the very start, the investigation into Daniel Pearl‘s kidnapping was mishandled. Investigators should have sought, on the first day Pearl came up missing, the long list of intelligence officers involved with tensions in Afghanistan and Kashmir during the past five or six years. In turn, these officers could have......

Christina Lamb, a reporter for London’s Sunday Telegraph, is well-known in Pakistan’s sociopolitical circles. She wrote “Waiting for Allah,” an examination of the 1990s, our decade of turmoil. A few days before Kabul fell to anti-Taliban forces, she was staying at the Hotel Serena in Quetta. During the night, a......

After two decades of civil war and three years of drought, the most desperate are reduced to eating grass to survive the harsh winter that has set upon towns and villages. A flu epidemic could kill as many as 15,000 people, and serious health problems are common. The other day,......

Pakistan’s leaders have proven to be very gullible when it comes to dealing with the United States. Way back on September 19, President Pervez Musharraf explained to his countrymen why Pakistan was turning against the Taliban and supporting the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Wouldn‘t you know, his reasons touched on......