Mahir Ali

1 day ago | dawn.com | Mahir Ali

KASHMIR has never deserved its status as a festering sore that serves as a constant reminder of the unfinished business of 1947. It did not audition for this role back then, and most Kashmiris would no doubt prefer not to inhabit an open wound inflicted by their neighbours.

1 week ago | dawn.com | Mahir Ali

EIGHTY years after Germany’s Third Reich formally accepted defeat, the enduring reluctance on all sides to draw lessons from the causes and consequences of World War II has sparked fears of history repeating itself. Echoes of the 1930s have been rumbling for several years, amid growing popular support across Europe for Nazi-adjacent political forces that thrive on ethno-nationalism and xenophobia. The Russia-Ukraine war is the largest conflict the continent has endured since May 1945.

2 weeks ago | dawn.com | Mahir Ali

THE reclamation of Saigon by indigenous forces 50 years ago today spelt the end of what the Vietnamese refer to as the ‘American war’. It wasn’t their first triumph in the struggle against Western imperialism. Almost 21 years earlier, Viet Minh forces had cornered the French army into a humiliating defeat at Dien Bien Phu, in a battle described as “the Stalingrad of decolonisation”.

3 weeks ago | dawn.com | Mahir Ali

BEFORE going in for heart surgery, a “rather vain Jesuit” asks God whether this is the end, and is informed that he would live for another 40 years. Delighted, he subsequently goes in for “a hair transplant, a facelift, liposuction, eyebrows, teeth”. Emerging from the clinic, he is run over by a car. It proves fatal. He is incensed upon meeting his Maker. “Oops, sorry!” Is the divine response.

4 weeks ago | dawn.com | Mahir Ali

ALMOST 70 years ago, the Chinese leader Mao Zedong dismissed the US as a “paper tiger”. He clarified that the reference was strategic. “Regarding [American imperialism] as a whole, we must despise it. But regarding each part, we must take it seriously. It has claws and fangs. We have to destroy it piecemeal.”That diatribe dates back to 1956, long before Mao himself, by then on his last legs, welcomed Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to Beijing.