Dr Zafar Khan Safdar

The Unfinished Promise Of Pakistan

The unfinished promise of Pakistan

  EVERY nation has two birthdays. The first marks its independence. The second begins when it fulfills the ideals upon which that independence was won.…

Dr Zafar Khan Safdar

Selling the sacred

  DIGITAL economy has found a market for almost everything, including the most intimate corners of human life. Marriage, once regarded as a deeply personal…

Dr Zafar Khan Safdar

The art of taxing the powerless

THERE is an ancient principle of just taxation, articulated across every serious tradition of political philosophy from Ibn Khaldun to Adam Smith, that a state…

Dr Zafar Khan Safdar

Local government: The missing tier

  PAKISTAN suffers from a shortage of government where it matters most. Power remains concentrated in Islamabad and the provincial capitals, while the institutions closest…

Dr Zafar Khan Safdar

Police: The first line of defence

  PAKISTAN’S national security debate has long been dominated by the armed forces, border management and counterterrorism operations. Yet recent attacks across Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan…

Dr Zafar Khan Safdar

A shared threat, a selective response

THERE is a particular cruelty in fighting a war that your neighbours are permitted to sustain indefinitely. Pakistan has lived with that reality for about…

Dr Zafar Khan Safdar

Balochistan: Captive to its elites

  BALOCHISTAN is often portrayed as a province held hostage by terrorism. That is only part of the story. It has also been held captive…

Dr Zafar Khan Safdar

The age of anger

THERE is a particular quality to the anger visible in Pakistan today that distinguishes it from ordinary frustration or political disagreement. It is not the…

Dr Zafar Khan Safdar

The great divide: Pakistan’s parallel realities

  PAKISTAN increasingly functions as two parallel societies. One purchases solutions from the private market whenever public institutions fail. The other remains dependent on the…

Dr Zafar Khan Safdar

Commerce without the counter

  PETER Drucker, the management philosopher whose ideas shaped modern business thinking across 20th century, warned decades ago that the greatest danger in times of…

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