Category: History

To understand the context of this post, please read At What Cost! Why Compute Economic Costs of Faulty Political Decisions At What Cost? Costs of perceived strictness of military dictatorships vs the reality of civilian governments in Pakistan. This post studies the case of Karachi disturbances and rise of MQM from 1980 and the relationships of…

To understand the context of this post, please read At What Cost! Why Compute Economic Costs of Faulty Political Decisions At What Cost? Costs of Branding a Politician as a Traitor There is a traitor/foreign agent production factory in Pakistan that seems to be in full swing. It has targets that have been trained on most…

[To understand the context of this post, please read At What Cost! Why Compute Economic Costs of Faulty Political Decisions] At What Cost? Costs of Self Proclaimed Field Marshals in Third World Countries In Pakistan the award of Field Marshal rank has been a product of sycophancy and political expediency for personal gain and short term…

[To understand the context of this post, please read At What Cost! Why Compute Economic Costs of Faulty Political Decisions] Doctrine of Necessity Decision by Justice Munir had been disastrous for Pakistan. Not only did this decision annulled the historic judgement of Sindh High Court that has disallowed the dissolution of assemblies by Gen Iskandar Mirza…

[To understand the context of this post, please read At What Cost! Why Compute Economic Costs of Faulty Political Decisions] Historic Failures of Strategic Doctrines by Dictator Generals in Pakistan What happens when generals (military men) arrogate to themselves “strategy making” when at best they have been trained for obtaining tactical advantage?  Are Generals Qualified…

[To understand the context of this post, please read At What Cost! Why Compute Economic Costs of Faulty Political Decisions] This post analyzes the continuing accumulation of long term costs associated with General Musharraf’s dicatatorship 1999-2008 in the areas of ideological costs, economic costs, governance costs, foreign policy debacles and political engineering costs. [Bullets are being…

[To understand the context of this post, please read At What Cost! Why Compute Economic Costs of Faulty Political Decisions] We typically look at General Ayub and the economic performance during his time, ignoring the long term economic and political impact of the decisions that he took and the processes that he set in motion. This…

Why we had only sham democracies in Pakistan? This post identifies eight fundamental tests on which our democracies fail to be called a real democracy. It identifies the forces and the compulsions that did not let them to mature into a real democracy. We will discuss the costs of sham democracies in a later post.…

[To understand the context of this post, please read At What Cost! Why Compute Economic Costs of Faulty Political Decisions] This post lists major cost elements of General Zia’s Dictatorial 11-year rule from 1977-1988. It identifies five major cost categories: costs related to ideology of Pakistan, economic costs, governance costs, foreign policy costs and costs of…