Farce Majeure: Why Pakistan’s 2018 General Election is a brutal mockery By Farahnaz Ispahani

Pakistan’s farcical election features Nawaz Sharif and his daughter in prison, hardline terrorists freely contesting, media censorship, crackdowns on protests — and bomb blasts targeting select political rallies. Pakistan has had a succession of weak elected civilian governments — but most of them at least started out with a veneer of respectability. The government formed after the July 25, 2018 …

Wellesley in Politics: A personal profile interview.

Wellesley in Politics: Interview with Farahnaz Ispahani ‘85  (@fispahani) Farahnaz Ispahani ‘85 has been a leading voice for women and religious minorities in Pakistan for over two decades, working as a journalist, member of Pakistan’s National Assembly, and most recently as a United States-based scholar. An advocate of Pakistan’s return to democracy during the military regime of Pervez Musharraf, she served …

Interview: ‘SK Abbasi is to Sharif what Manmohan Singh was to Sonia. Farahnaz Ispahani

  With Pakistan also celebrating 70 years of its independence Farahnaz Ispahani, Global Fellow at Washington’s Wilson Centre, former member of Pakistan Parliament (from Pakistan People’s Party) and former media advisor to the Pakistan President, spoke to Rohit E David on the political flux in Islamabad after the ouster of Nawaz Sharif as prime minister, its impact on Kashmir and the nefarious role of …

Benazir Bhutto — The Muslim Leader Who Saw Jihadis Coming- Farahnaz Ispahani

Two years after being elected, the world’s first female Muslim prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, received intelligence that a man called Osama bin Laden had given orders to kill her. The year was 1990. Al-Qaeda had not yet officially been formed, but the organizers of global jihad had already determined that Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they launched their first modern jihad …

The Wronged Man

Husain Haqqani tells it like it is. Husain Haqqani, Islamabad’s former ambassador to Washington, is making waves with his latest book, Magnificent Delusions, which speaks hard truths about the arrant alliance between Pakistan and the United States. In 2011, Haqqani was forced to resign as envoy under Army pressure, and the Iftikhar Chaudhry-led Supreme Court, champion of the hypernationalist narrative, …

“The merits of the case” By Farahnaz Ispahani

    Erstwhile coup-making general and former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf was indicted on murder charges Tuesday in connection with the 2007 assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. While the anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Rawalpindi had named Musharraf in the case in early 2011, and declared he was a proclaimed offender in August of that year, today’s indictment marks the first time that a former …

Farahnaz Ispahani’s interview to “The voice of Russia”

Pakistan’s former President Pervez Musharraf has been indicted on three charges over the 2007 assassination of the country’s opposition leader and Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Prosecutors say that he is accused of murder, criminal conspiracy to murder and facilitation of murder. The offence carries the death penalty or life imprisonment. Ms. Farahnaz Ispahani, a Pakistani politician and Public Policy Scholar …

The problem with Pakistan’s democracy

By Farahnaz Ispahani   On Sunday, former military dictator Pervez Musharraf was at last given permission to run in the parliamentary elections scheduled for May 11, but only in the northern district of Chitral. Two other districts rejected his nomination papers, and his application in Islamabad is still pending. Elections officials in Pakistan, acting under directives of the country’s Supreme …

Elections 2013: The Pakistan establishment strikes back

 Farahnaz Ispahani As Pakistan approaches its next general elections, scheduled for 11  May, questions have arisen once again about the fairness of the electoral process. The problem stems from Pakistan’s long history of meddling in politics by unelected institutions of state, euphemistically referred to as “the establishment.” In addition to direct military rule for half its life as an independent …

Five years in Pakistan

The unique moment of a civilian government completing its full term is in danger of being undermined by the failure of political parties to reach consensus on a caretaker government Pakistan is scheduled to go to the polls on May 11. These would be the first democratic elections in our history coming at the end of the completion of an …