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Friday 6 February 2026

Independent Republic of Manipur?

Manipur has stopped behaving like a state and started behaving like a border. When a cabinet changes land like a provocation and a confidence vote inside the Assembly cannot calm the street outside, the idea of “Republic of Manipur” stops being metaphor and starts sounding like a warning.

In Manipur, the state still exists on paper, but on the ground a separate country is being rehearsed in fear, barricades, and broken trust. — FILE/THE THURSDAY TIMES

Monday 2 February 2026

The BLA’s poseurs receive the death they deserve

While the BLA's violence seeks to manufacture inevitability in Balochistan, the answers it receives from Pakistan collapse distance and deny it spectacle it craves so dearly—time and time again.

As Balochistan was challenged in quick succession, Pakistan's experience shaped the response before fear could settle, and the line held. — MONTAGE/THE THURSDAY TIMES

Saturday 31 January 2026

We can finally be proud

Davos was not a redemption arc but a stress test. Pakistan did not arrive seeking applause or indulgence, but to demonstrate whether discipline could finally replace denial. What mattered was constraint—and the recognition that the old escape routes no longer exist.

Davos 2026 was not a redemption arc but a stress test. Pakistan arrived not to inspire confidence, but to demonstrate whether discipline could finally replace denial. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Thursday 8 January 2026

On the offensive

There is a certain discipline in Ahmed Sharif’s choice of words as of late. Melodrama is avoided, but denial is not indulged either. If Pakistan is to argue its case internationally, he suggests that it must first lay out its qualms.

Ahmed Sharif has pulled off what too many official pressers avoid. He put the year on the table as a ledger, not a mood. Operations, incidents, deaths, disruptions. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Wednesday 17 December 2025

The death cell fairytale

Imran Khan's sons' claims are cinematic, emotive, and tailor-made for headlines. They are also, on the evidence presented, not proven — and that distinction is the difference between responsible commentary and propaganda laundering.

Until verifiable transparency exists, the correct stance is not to amplify the most lurid claim in the room, but to say out loud what too many headlines try to blur: these assertions have not been proven, and they should not be treated as fact. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Monday 24 November 2025

KP misrule, Punjab momentum

From Haripur to Lahore, the ballot box has rebuked anti-state theatrics and KP misgovernance, tightening PML-N’s grip on a weary electorate, as PTI’s agitation and foreign-amplified campaigns collide with reality and by-election voters turn to order over unrest.

Voters have sidestepped online chaos, punishing PTI’s politics of inteshar, and quietly rewarding the PML-N’s promise of stability and governance. — FILE

Monday 17 November 2025

Breaking Pakistan’s four walls

Devolution that stops at the provincial secretariat is not devolution; it is merely colonialism with a different accent. A Mirpuri airport, a Multani university and a Gwadar harbour are not vanity projects; they are stress tests of whether the new map actually serves the periphery.

A country of more than 240 million cannot be run as if it were a modest federation of four gentlemen’s estates. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Saturday 8 November 2025

A house of ashes

A state which refuses to distinguish between the vulnerable and the weaponised is not compassionate: it is careless with its own survival. Imran Khan, the former prime minister of Pakistan, wagered the nation's security on charisma and sentiment, where leverage, verification, and distance were required. In pursuit of his own love affair with the Taliban, he was blind to all three.

The posture of the current leadership deserves to be read not as an authoritarian reflex, but as a necessary reassertion of adulthood. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Sunday 19 October 2025

Steel in silk gloves

Pakistan came with one demand and departed with verification, guarantors and a timetable; Kabul kept its face, Islamabad kept the substance. A new regional normal now bears Pakistan’s imprint.

Pakistan turned leverage into law; Doha delivered a ceasefire on Islamabad’s terms and a path that makes terror sanctuary a breach, not a habit. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Tuesday 14 October 2025

Outcomes over optics

Critics insist that Pakistan’s sympathy for Gaza is performative. They are wrong. It is historical, ethical, and intensely practical. War does not stop at borders. It migrates into prices, into power cuts, into classrooms, into the psychology of a young man who has seen too many funerals and too few pay cheques.

When a neighbour burns, you send water, not tweets. Pakistan’s angle is not vanity. It is triage. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Tuesday 7 October 2025

India’s killer cough syrup

India cannot claim the title Pharmacy of the World while children die from poisoned cough syrup. Pride means nothing without transparent regulation, lot-by-lot testing, and accountability from factory floor to cabinet table.

A pharmacy that kills its children is not a leader; it is a system begging for reform. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Sunday 5 October 2025

Hospitality is not a carte blanche

For fifty years Pakistan sheltered millions of Afghans while richer capitals sermonised from afar. If promises are paused in the West, do not scold the neighbour for enforcing its borders; honour your pledges and share the burden.

Pakistan’s stance is not cruelty but closure on a half-century of generosity that others must now help carry. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Friday 26 September 2025

The pity Nobel

The Nobel Peace Prize risks turning from conscience into stagecraft when nominees with alleged militant proximities are amplified by friendly institutions, eroding the firewall of secrecy and trust.

Absent of recusals, disclosures, and unqualified denunciations of violence, awarding no one is better than laundering reputations under the halo of peace. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Tuesday 16 September 2025

The season of institutions

Anchored by the Hafiz effect, Pakistan has shown that deterrence with restraint, tighter borders, cleaner markets, and a geo-economic push via the SIFC have recast the state as reliable, ensuring that routines, not miracles, move the country forward.

Power that fears questions is already weak. Power that welcomes them becomes resilient; and resilience is the only insurance policy that lasts longer than a news cycle. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Saturday 13 September 2025

Hugs that draw borders

Israel's attack tried to shrink Qatar, and Pakistan answered with presence, not bluster, drawing a hard line for sovereignty. In Doha, mediation became infrastructure: solidarity turned from pose to policy.

Pakistani diplomacy grows teeth in Doha. — ORIGINAL/MICHAEL MCCALL

Thursday 11 September 2025

Bullets abroad, bullets at home

Charlie Kirk built his career defending guns at home and Israel abroad; yet he died by the very force he glorified. His death reveals the brittleness of ideologies that mistake force for security.

The man who preached force met its reckoning in a single shot. — JOSH EDELSON / AFP

Friday 1 August 2025

America is in Pakistan’s pocket—yet again

Trump may be isolating the U.S. from the world, tearing up alliances and redrawing the map on his own terms, but as others scramble for relevance, Pakistan has walked out the front door of the White House with an oil deal in hand, signalling a comeback for Pakistan's place on the American mantle.

In Trump’s eyes, the age of Indian exceptionalism is over. Islamabad is the new favourite — and it's not asking for applause, just access. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Monday 28 July 2025

Stability, by any means necessary

The Field Marshal hasn’t come to charm headlines or peddle illusions; he’s come to stitch a broken republic back together, and in a region entranced by spectacle and the echo of its own bravado, his silence feels less like absence and more like authorship.

The Field Marshal's more difficult battle has been internal, and here too Munir has shown a style of leadership that is surgical rather than symbolic. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Sunday 22 June 2025

New York has had enough of the old playbook

New York does not need another manager. It needs a mayor who understands who the city is really for—and who is willing to fight to make that true. We believe Zohran Mamdani is best placed to do that.

New York does not need another manager. It needs a mayor who understands who the city is really for — and who is willing to fight to make that true. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Saturday 21 June 2025

A handshake, a medal, and the choreography of realpolitik

Trump may not win the Nobel. Oslo may smile and move on. But Pakistan has already reclaimed what it truly sought: relevance. The gesture may seem excessive, but it’s a quiet re-entry into a room it refuses to be locked out of: a step back into Washington’s good graces.

Trump can shift global discourse in a single sentence, even a foolish one. Pakistan knows this. Munir knows this. So rather than silence or scorn, they gave him something golden: a story to tell about himself. One that benefits them more than him. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Tuesday 17 June 2025

The bloody parasitic imperial whore

In a world which rewards champagne exiles and punishes resistance, Khawaja Asif chose authenticity over platitude. In doing so, he said what much of the global south quietly thinks: those who bathe in imperial perfume do not speak for the oppressed.

What Asif detonated with his words was that illusion—the fantasy—that imperial ghosts can masquerade as democratic messiahs. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Thursday 12 June 2025

A trio for the ages

They didn’t posture or perform. They didn’t arrive with placards or pleadings. This trio threaded law, loss, and logic with the calibration of those who knew the weight of what they represent and the silence which usually follows them into Western rooms; this time, they are refusing to let that silence survive.

At every stop thus far, the trio of Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, Hina Rabbani Khar, and Sherry Rehman, has presented not a grievance ledger but a governance proposition. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Wednesday 4 June 2025

Reason in a region addicted to fire

In a world drunk on the drumbeat of war, it takes uncommon nerve to whisper restraint. Yesterday, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari did just that—softly, firmly, devastatingly—from the podium of the United Nations.

Bilawal didn’t cast India as the eternal villain—but demanded that its actions be seen without varnish. In an age of digital disinformation, where narratives spin faster than missiles travel, that clarity is revolutionary. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Monday 26 May 2025

Dar’s quiet line

Ishaq Dar, as Pakistan's foreign and deputy prime minister, resisted the urge, so common in crises, for maximalist posturing. He did not parade diplomatic telegrams for public approval. He did not pick Twitter fights. He kept Pakistan’s tone serious and sober.

While jets roared overhead, Ishaq Dar reached for the world’s ear, not its throat. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Wednesday 14 May 2025

Free of Britain, recolonised in saffron

In Narendra Modi, the RSS has found not just a leader but a messiah; one with the political cunning of an autocrat and the populist charisma of a televangelist. Under his watch, textbooks have been rewritten, history sanitised, minorities demonised, and a billion people convinced that all of this is progress.

In Modi's new India, the concept of reason has truly been tarnished into oblivion. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES | DO NOT REPRODUCE

Sunday 11 May 2025

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown

Showcasing its air superiority, the Pakistan Air Force outmanoeuvred and outclassed India’s French Rafales, shattering the illusion of Hindutva-fuelled dominance in South Asian skies, proving this latest cross-border skirmish wasn’t just a dogfight—it was the moment the PAF reclaimed its throne above the clouds.

The PAF’s recent engagement with the Indian Air Force—what many are calling a “cold shock over warm borders”—was no accident. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Wednesday 7 May 2025

Dassault’s Rafale raffle backfires for the Indians

India’s €7 billion Rafale programme suffered a severe credibility blow when three aircraft were reportedly downed during the cross‑border strikes, erasing some 2.6% in Dassault’s market value within hours. This reframes the Rafale from “game‑changer” to cautionary example, strengthening Pakistan’s diplomatic hand and undermining India’s deterrence strategy.

Pakistan reports shooting down Indian Rafale jet; French intelligence confirms aircraft loss. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Wednesday 30 April 2025

India’s Sikhs will never know how much Pakistan loves them

It is unfortunate to write that India's Sikhs may never fully grasp the depth of Pakistan’s affection because that affection is filtered through a wall of suspicion built by the Indian state, which views any bridge extended westward as inherently suspect.

A Sikh pilgrim embraces a Pakistani villager near Kartarpur, as the flag of Pakistan waves behind them. — MICHAEL MCCALL FOR THE THURSDAY TIMES

Thursday 24 April 2025

Tuesday 26 November 2024

Screaming bloody murder

A city choking on its own contradictions, Islamabad’s chaos lays bare the PTI’s destructive theatrics, the PML-N’s paralysing cowardice, and Mohsin Naqvi's cruel apathy.

A montage is shown of incumbent Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif (L), Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi (C), and incarcerated former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan (R). — MONTAGE/THE THURSDAY TIMES

Friday 22 November 2024

Wednesday 6 November 2024

Does a Trump comeback mean a free Imran?

Trump’s return stirs hope for Imran Khan’s supporters, but entrenched political dynamics and Pakistan’s judiciary make intervention complex and unlikely.

Trump’s re-election fuels Khan supporters’ hope for freedom. — Michael Reynolds/Pool via Bloomberg

Wednesday 23 October 2024

Third time’s the charm

Third time’s the charm, as they say—and Nawaz Sharif seems determined to prove it. After making bold moves for peace with India in 1999 and again in 2015, he's setting the stage for another attempt in 2025. His optimism is hard to ignore, but will his latest push for dialogue finally break the cycle of rivalry?

A montage is shown of former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif with incumbent Indian prime minister Narendra Modi (L) and the late Atal Vajpayee (R). — MONTAGE/THE THURSDAY TIMES

Monday 14 October 2024

Pakistan, back on the world stage

Pakistan is making a bold comeback on the world stage with the 2024 SCO Summit in Islamabad, turning challenges into opportunities for regional influence and economic renewal. This is more than a summit—it’s Pakistan reclaiming its voice in global affairs.

A montage is shown of Pakistani prime minister Shehbaz Sharif meeting with various global world heads of State. — FILE/THE THURSDAY TIMES

Tuesday 8 October 2024

PTI’s bold move: skipping Palestine talks to focus on… themselves

Imran Khan’s PTI skipping the APC on Palestine while he's in jail? Sure, because nothing screams “leadership” like ghosting a major diplomatic issue. Maybe he’s too busy plotting his next chess move with Israel, as some suggest. Clearly, supporting Palestine only matters when he’s the star of the show.

A montage is shown of former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan atop a backdrop of the Israeli and Palestinian flags. — MONTAGE/THE THURSDAY TIMES

Monday 29 July 2024

Friday 21 June 2024

It is time to either revamp, or abolish, Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws

Pakistan's draconian blasphemy laws have caused more harm than good. They have fostered a culture of mob violence and lynchings, embedding religious extremism into society. The misuse of these laws to serve personal vendettas undermines our justice system and fuels ignorance. It is imperative to reform or abolish these laws to protect human rights and promote societal harmony.

An illustration is shown of mob violence. — ORIGINAL/THE THURSDAY TIMES

Wednesday 7 February 2024

Published by Thursday Media International thursday.media