Today, my aunt, Aleema Khan, has been abducted by police in Lahore. Our family has been told nothing about where she has been taken. Her family and lawyers cannot reach her.
This is the behaviour of a fascist government - abducting people, terrorising families and trampling human rights, due process and the rule of law while pretending to stand for democracy.
First they imprisoned my father. Now they are coming after his family.
We demand immediate access to her for her family and lawyers, full disclosure of where she is being held, and her immediate release.
The world cannot keep looking away from what is happening in Pakistan.
The Defence Minister is right. It’s why I have never been considered Jewish by the Jewish community. My mother was a Church of England Protestant. And by this logic, my father was not Jewish either. His mother was a French Catholic. As ever, in attempting to undermine my sons, Pakistan’s Defence Minister has scored an embarrassing own goal.
Planning Commission is not planning.
It is issuing wishes. URAAN Pakistan wants 6–7% GDP growth, 10% export growth, 30% less load-shedding, and female LFP from 22% to 35%—with no model, no financing path, and no reform of regulation, SOEs, energy circular debt, or merit.
No wonder the economy is dead.
• Growth target: 6–7% GDP. With ~2% labor growth, ~1% human capital, ~1% TFP, you still need extra capital of ~11% of GDP a year. Investment is ~13% of GDP today. That means investment must jump to ~24%. How? Silence.
• Exports: 10% a year, from ~$38bn toward ~$46bn in five years in one write-up; other official slogans go to $60bn and a $1tn economy by 2035 / $3tn by 2047. That implies ~84% more export-sector capital and extra $8–10bn a year in plant, infrastructure, and trade facilitation. Instruments: speeches and ads.
• Energy: 30% less load-shedding ≈ +6,000 MW. At a modest $1m/MW that is ~$6bn / PKR 1,500bn. PSDP is ~PKR 500bn. Circular debt already ~PKR 1.2tn, rolled on bank loans. More supply without reform has previously meant more circular debt, then higher tariffs, then lower demand.
• Human capital: literacy/numeracy gaps, weak TVET, low productivity, female LFP stuck near 22%. Target of 35% with no education, skills, or labor-market reform, and no mention of merit vs. patronage.
• Method: URAAN rejects explicit growth models. It assumes investment, labor, and productivity will line up inside the same 19th-century regulatory sludge. Korea/China sequenced capital, productivity, and reform. This plan lists destinations and skips the map.
• Result: ambitions without feasibility, priorities, or institutions. Planning as dream factory, not a body that tests linkages and trade-offs.
https://t.co/kx6wxsl9Gm https://t.co/5AdUGp5ZYu
Another planning failure.
We’re hurtling toward more provinces because a media owner said so and some VIP dinners landed well.
No paper. No research. Planning failed us again — the ministry that does ji hazoor and wastes the PSDP.
Journalists are ecstatic. Media is ecstatic. Politicians love the attention.
Once more we’re racing into a fiscal disaster: like the roads and energy schemes that piled up debt while we lost the plot. New governors, cabinets, secretariats, police commands. Fresh patronage. Same centre, smaller nameplates.
We as a people hate thought, research and detail. So we skip the work that actually considers the alternative: real local government.
• Nigeria didn’t decentralise by multiplying states. It moved the centre to 36 capitals while cities stayed branch offices. The lesson is elections, money, staffing and land at the local level — not more assemblies. https://t.co/G0r93c3iwp
• Cities make the wealth. Provinces, by themselves, don’t. Ten cities already generate ~95% of federal tax; Karachi alone is close to a quarter of GDP. Split Punjab tomorrow and Faisalabad still won’t run its own land market. The unit that matters is the city, without PAS treating it as a junior district. https://t.co/FWg1Ui4V5B
Reform the planning machinery that rubber-stamps waste. Don’t franchise the same failure onto a new map.
A reminder of that time in 2018 when we got a bit excited about making our Test debuts against Pakistan, only to find out that @ICC had said Ireland not Iceland. We were fully ready to go!
Another cruel reality of our society exposed in judicial commission proceedings today. #MirRaza's @bykeapk driver Ihsanullah who from day one cooperated with family & investigation was evicted by police & Bykea vehicle taken back & fired for getting involved in a police case P1/2
Did SBP also say in how many years $10bnxRs280=Rs2800bn cost of that infrastructure would be recovered, Mr Honest?
Did it say intellectual dishonesty brought US-Iran war?
Did SBP take into account 30pc diversion of committed LNG imports at discounts before US attack and then replacing it with triple the imported cost?
Did SBP calculate impact or explain why power sector not ready to have LNG quantities contracted for it?
Did SBP also examine the cost of Rs85,000 per ton tax on furnace oil on local consumption vs it's export at almost half the price or it's impact on power generation cost?
Cut-paste is no replacement to intellectual dishonesty either
میں نے ساری عمر کرکٹ گراونڈ میں گزاری۔ خود بھی فاسٹ باولنگ کی۔ بے شمار اوورز کئے۔ اپنے ہم عصر باولرز کو بھی باولنگ کرتے دیکھا۔ دنیا بھر کے باولرز کو مختلف اور مشکل ترین گراونڈز میں باولنگ کرتے دیکھا۔ hamstring,groin,calf muscles میں تکلیف کے باوجود فاسٹ باولرز کو لمبی باولنگ کرتے دیکھا۔ مگر یہ پہلی بار سنا ہے کہ پنڈلی میں کھینچاو کی وجہ سے ٹیسٹ میچ میں کوئی بیٹسمین بیٹنگ کرنے نہیں گیا۔ اور آپکی نیشنل ٹیم کو نو کھلاڑی کے آوٹ ہونے پر اننگ ختم کرنا پڑی۔
پاکستان کرکٹ ختم شد
@abdullah_0mar If only he had supporting tracks in India just for 15 test matches he would have had 300 plus wickets in tests as well. Very underrated bowler.
Ocean Mall is a deathtrap. Fire exits and lifts and stairs need to be checked. Plus vol of people needs to be limited. SBCA and KMC fire brigade should check it out. Went there for cinema event. NEVER AGAIN.
"If your daughter is crazy, why do you bring her outside? Keep her locked up at home."
This is the world journalist @Ambreen_Sardar is raising her autistic daughter Elia in. Thread🧵
In three of Karachi's poorest coastal neighbourhoods — Bhains Colony, Ibrahim Hyderi, Ali Akbar Shah — a van full of medical equipment is answering a question that's haunted families for generations: what actually kills our babies? Thread🧵