Volume 5, No. 9, September 2023
Editor: Rashed Rahman
Khan, Ayesha. The Women’s Movement in Pakistan: Activism, Islam and Democracy.
398pp., I.B Tauris 2018
Dr. Maria Rashid
Titled The Women’s Movement in Pakistan: Activism, Islam and Democracy, Ayesha Khan’s book is a comprehensive and nuanced account of the history of the Women’s Action Forum (WAF). This reading of the women’s movement is particularly pertinent at this juncture in Pakistan’s history for two reasons. First, WAF’s activities unfolded in the context of an over-vigilant state, hyper-sensitive to dissent, under Zia during Pakistan’s third martial law regime (1977-1988).
Death of imagination
Rashed Rahman
Husain Haqqani: Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State, Harper Collins, India, 2018
Husain Haqqani is no stranger to Pakistani (or global) audiences. Student leader, journalist, political activist/operator, Ambassador, author, he has worn many hats in his life. Currently he has chosen to live in self-imposed exile in the US in the wake of the Memogate case that eventually, for all its sensationalist hype, ended as a damp squib.
Professor Dr. Maqsudul Hasan Nuri
As an umbrella term, ‘national security’ encompasses many dimensions. Hence there is a need of it being perceived in the right perspective and proportion. A common prevailing assumption is that security leads to conditions of all-round well-being and economic development in a society. This is true only where the sine qua non is in place: balanced and well thought out security, but if it is lopsided or overplayed, negative consequences could follow, impeding relations with neighbours, national harmony and economic development.