Radio Pakistan Peshawar has new walls. Now find its lost voices
The trial over the 2023 arson must run its course. The state need not wait for a verdict to search for surviving copies of decades of Pashto and Hindko music, drama and speech.
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98 stories
Yesterday
Pink buses are a good start. Every bus should be safe for women
The CDA’s 30 women-only electric buses deserve a quick launch. But Peshawar shows that making every bus safe does more for women than a separate fleet, and Islamabad should do both
Give KP’s daughters the cervical cancer jab, and the facts with it
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s drive to protect 2.93 million girls deserves every parent’s support. Its success will depend on trusted women at the door, honest answers on safety and a plan for the girls it misses.
Tuesday 10 November 2026
Terrorists who turn mosques into bomb stores have told us who they are
Security forces found explosives and torture cells inside two mosques in Mir Ali. The terrorists who did it have no claim on Islam. Pakistan should back the soldiers who cleared them, restore the mosques quickly and make every pulpit part of the fight
Lahore has reopened a gurdwara. India should reopen Kartarpur
A Temple Road shrine shut since 1947 is open again, and more than 50 gurdwaras are being restored. Pakistan should keep them open and full of pilgrims. India should reopen the Kartarpur Corridor before Guru Nanak’s birth anniversary
Lahore’s air needs more than a change of wind
The wind cleared Monday’s smog. It will not clear the next one. Punjab has more tools than ever, and now needs a year-round plan measured by the air people breathe
Monday 9 November 2026
Publish the Tarbela 5 report, and make someone answer for it
Water has broken into the extension twice in 15 months. Pakistan needs this dam, which is why it needs the inquiry findings on the table and not another assurance
Maryam Nawaz is right: no exam should wait for a VIP
The Punjab chief minister removed an officer who moved an intermediate exam for her visit and ordered no closures for her tours. The order now needs to become a rule for every province
Sunday 8 November 2026
Cheaper cars are welcome. Safer cars are overdue
The new auto policy starts from an honest diagnosis. It will be judged on the dates, the enforcement and the sums the government has not yet shown
Saturday 7 November 2026
A slogan on the tin will not feed Pakistan’s babies
The drug regulator’s new formula label is welcome. But Pakistan has had a strong law against formula marketing since 2002, and it has barely been enforced
Keep the Islamabad channel open
The US vice president now speaks to Field Marshal Munir almost daily. Pakistan should use that trust to push for a ceasefire that reopens Hormuz, and never let mediation become participation
Friday 6 November 2026
Close the scam centres, and the doors that keep them open
Karachi’s biggest raid yet shows the scale of a racket that steals from the world in Pakistan’s name. Arrests are not enough without the money and the protectors
One Constitution Avenue needs more than a hotel
The government has taken back the towers and promised a five-star hotel. Refunds, a published report and a reformed CDA matter more
Thursday 5 November 2026
The Fa’az shows what Pakistan can do when it stays the course
The first homegrown air-to-air missile is a real achievement. On the day gas went on a timetable, its lesson of patience belongs in the energy sector too
Twenty years is long enough to wait for $800m
Pakistan is still owed about $800m for PTCL, over 32 properties worth a fraction of that. Arbitration is the right step, if the state fixes its own file and sets a deadline
Wednesday 4 November 2026
Ten years on, Modi’s note ban has little to show for the pain
A decade after 86% of India’s cash was cancelled overnight, its own figures show cash, corruption and election money are all still there
Tuesday 3 November 2026
A falling oil price is not an energy policy
Oil’s sharp fall on hopes of an Iran deal is a welcome reprieve. Pakistan should spend it on storage, a pricing rule, a fairer levy and the solar shift its people have already begun.
Thursday 29 October 2026
Four fiefdoms and a flag
Pakistan's four provinces are not an administrative map. They are four estates, kept intact by the men who profit from the distance between citizens and the state.
Saturday 17 October 2026
The Thursday Times targeted in major cyberattack by Indian hackers
An extensive security investigation uncovered a sustained Indian intrusion into the publication’s digital infrastructure. With normal operations restored, The Thursday Times says its commitment to independent journalism remains unchanged.
Thursday 17 September 2026
Why Pakistan doesn’t need a treaty to defend Makkah
Pakistan's commitment to defending Makkah predates the pact it just signed, and its silence on specifics isn't hesitation, it's strategy.
Thursday 27 August 2026
How Pakistan overtook India in global diplomacy
What does it take to go from an unanswered White House phone call to a UN Security Council seat in two years? Ask Pakistan. The Makkah Defence Pact. US-Iran mediation. An invite from Damascus. India lost Washington's favor in the same stretch.
Friday 21 August 2026
A prisoner in his own inner citadel
Imran Khan’s sister says he is fit, with normal blood pressure and improved eyesight. Official records document specialist treatment and family access. Yet the international narrative remains one of isolation and medical crisis. The record versus the rhetoric.
Tuesday 11 August 2026
Pakistan’s word is now worth a treaty
Countries do not enter mutual defence commitments with partners whose reliability they doubt, because the cost of misjudging that is measured in soldiers. Riyadh and Ankara have decided Pakistan is a state whose word will hold when it is expensive to hold it.
Friday 24 July 2026
India’s playbook for dissent has run out of pages
A Chief Justice called unemployed youth cockroaches. An exam sat by 22 lakh students was leaked, and some of them killed themselves. India's government waited, then delegitimised, then used force, then blamed Pakistan. Each step has failed.
Saturday 4 July 2026
At Khamenei’s funeral, Pakistan made a statement
Pakistan may have disagreements with Iran, and Iran may have disappointed Pakistan by leaning too warmly towards India at times. But neighbours who share borders must also share funerals.
Monday 22 June 2026
Pakistan’s Swiss success was bigger than one man
Pakistan’s role at the Lake Lucerne Summit marked a rare diplomatic success, placing Islamabad alongside Qatar as a mediator in the US-Iran process. Shehbaz Sharif gave the effort political direction, while Field Marshal Asim Munir added security credibility.
Monday 15 June 2026
And we’ll keep on fighting til’ the end
From crisis, isolation and doubt, Pakistan has stepped into the diplomatic centre of gravity. If the US-Iran peace framework holds, Islamabad will not merely have brokered a deal. It will have reminded the world that nations are not condemned to the reputations others write for them.
Monday 25 May 2026
Pakistan’s mediation role ≠ Israeli normalisation
Pakistan’s role in de-escalation does not amount to acceptance of normalisation with Israel. Islamabad’s Palestine policy remains rooted in statehood, Al-Quds, and pre-1967 borders, not the politics of the Iran file.
Monday 18 May 2026
India debates while Pakistan mediates
Senior RSS and military remarks in India have reopened the question of dialogue with Pakistan, exposing the limits of New Delhi’s hardline public posture. At the same time, Islamabad is trying to show that its relevance now extends beyond India, through crisis diplomacy involving Iran, the US, the Gulf, China and multilateral finance.
Wednesday 13 May 2026
Pakistan’s diplomatic prowess has made it a target
Pakistan’s growing diplomatic relevance has triggered a sharper narrative war, with foreign criticism, hostile media framing and domestic security incidents being used to cast Islamabad as unstable just as it re-enters the centre of regional diplomacy.
Wednesday 6 May 2026
Selective outrage
From South Waziristan to Balochistan and Punjab, Pakistan continues to confront terrorist violence that targets security forces and civilians alike. Yet while the world speaks loudly for other states' victims, Pakistani suffering too often receives silence, indifference, or selective concern.
Friday 24 April 2026
After Kabul’s fall, the West outsourced its shame to Pakistan
As Pete Hegseth promises a historic review into the Fall of Kabul, the real accounting must extend beyond the airport chaos to the Afghan families left stranded in Pakistan by Western failure, delay and broken promises.
Wednesday 22 April 2026
The world capital of diplomacy awaits its Gladiators
Will there be a second Islamabad Talks? Undoubtedly. The notion of an Islamabad Talks 2 have not materialised on cue, but that doesn't mean the process is dead. It means Pakistan holds the only channel both the U.S. and Iran can still use.
Tuesday 21 April 2026
The tragedy would be to celebrate Iqbal and ignore him
On the 88th death anniversary of Allama Iqbal, it is worth asking not only what he meant to the making of Pakistan, but what his ideas demand of the country now. As Islamabad tries to keep open channels between Iran and the United States, Iqbal’s poetry feels less like memory and more like instruction.
Saturday 18 April 2026
Moving beyond survival
After years of being defined by debt scares, bailouts and economic uncertainty, Pakistan is showing signs of a broader recovery marked by renewed market access, stronger investor confidence, diplomatic relevance and momentum that isn't stopping anytime soon.
Sunday 12 April 2026
When rivals need a bridge, they still call Islamabad
Pakistan’s emergence as the setting for U.S.-Iran diplomacy in 2026 was not a sudden stroke of luck but the return of an older strategic role; long before officials sat across from one another in Islamabad, Pakistan was already the back channel by which messages, assurances and ceasefires were carried.
Friday 10 April 2026
As Pakistan builds bridges, India builds fantasies
While New Delhi continues to sell Pakistan internally as a terrorist state, Islamabad is increasingly positioning itself as a mediator, a bridge-builder and a country whose real strategic mission is peace.
Monday 6 April 2026
The Power to Dar
At a moment when Asia has been pulled towards confrontation and uncertainty, Ishaq Dar has helped place Pakistan at the centre of the diplomatic effort for peace. In the past month, his steady, coalition-building approach has turned Islamabad into a credible channel for dialogue, resulting in the Islamabad Accords.
Tuesday 24 March 2026
Absolute cinema
Pakistan is no longer just reacting to events. It is increasingly being seen as a country around which events may be organised. Islamabad is emerging as a possible venue, Pakistani channels as useful, and names such as Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner and JD Vance suggest that the diplomatic centre of gravity may, however tentatively, be shifting toward Pakistan.
Thursday 12 February 2026
Manipur’s slow break
Separatism rarely begins with a declaration. It begins with a sentence that sounds almost reasonable in a frightened place: we cannot live under them. We, as Pakistanis, know this better than anyone.
