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Mahir Ali

Mahir Ali

Dawn

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Donald 2.0

This character is now chief executive of the most powerful nation, accompanied by equally immoral underlings.

22.01.2025 90

Dawn

Mahir Ali

LA goes to blazes

There could be worse to come under Trump.

15.01.2025 90

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Zones of interest

ONE of the more thought-provoking movies to emerge in the past couple of years, from a western film industry that thrives on pointless fantasies,...

08.01.2025 100

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Carter’s centuries

JIMMY Carter’s extraordinary longevity partly accounts for his exceptional status among the US presidential pantheon. He was born when Calvin...

01.01.2025 3

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Pacem in terris?

JUST before sitting down yesterday to write this column, I was listening to a History Extra podcast about the ‘history behind the headlines’ of...

25.12.2024 10

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Seoul suspense

BACK in the early 1980s, when Akbar S. Ahmed was contemplating whether Pakistan could be Japan, he might have missed an opportunity to focus on a...

18.12.2024 10

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Whither Syria?

IT turned out that there were no speed bumps in the fast lane on the road to Damascus. The incredibly swift demise of the Assad regime appears to...

11.12.2024 5

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Irrepressible poet

THE story goes that Chiragh Deen, a tailor based in Baghbanpura on the outskirts of Lahore, often entertained clients with his verses — many of...

04.12.2024 10

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Annual COP-out

EVEN the low expectations that preceded the 29th Conference of Parties (COP29), which concluded in the early hours of Sunday, turned out to have...

27.11.2024 4

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Past and future

THIS week’s column was intended to be a diatribe against the circumstances that are choking the denizens of Delhi and Lahore, and a reflection on...

20.11.2024 7

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Trumped again

DONKEYS are reputed to be stubborn beasts. That possible misinterpretation of their instinct for self-preservation characterises a party that has...

13.11.2024 3

Dawn

Mahir Ali

True Brits

THERE are ways in which Kemi Badenoch’s advent as Britain’s opposition leader, at the helm of the Conservative Party, can be seen as a...

06.11.2024 3

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Trump or Harris?

A WEEK from today, nervous tension will be spiking within and beyond the US as the results roll in from what has been hyped up as the most...

30.10.2024 4

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Aspiring dreamers

AMONG the various things that lately have not gone Imran Khan’s way was his predictable elimination from the list of candidates for the post of...

23.10.2024 30

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Disunited nations

THE inability of the UN to facilitate the primary goal set out in its hopeful charter nearly eight decades ago, “to save succeeding generations...

16.10.2024 5

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Beyond Oct 7

IF it is considered impolitic to denounce Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza over the past year without condemning the inhumane crimes committed by...

09.10.2024 3

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Unseen horrors

WHEN yet another Sudanese civil war erupted in April 2023, the then year-old Russian invasion of Ukraine continued to hog the attention of the so-...

02.10.2024 3

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Agents of terror

OVER the past week, the Netanyahu regime may have succeeded in its endeavours to provoke a wider war. It isn’t difficult to imagine what the...

25.09.2024 20

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Electoral meddling

“THE American people,” the US attorney general Merrick Garland declared recently, “are entitled to know when a foreign power engages in...

11.09.2024 2

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Right, wrong & left

LAST Sunday, the state election in Thuringia for the first time propelled an extreme right-wing party to pole position anywhere in Germany since...

04.09.2024 2

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Taliban on steroids

THE inspired but abortive effort a century ago by a king and his feminist queen to thrust Afghanistan into their vision of modernity offers a stark...

28.08.2024 9

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Poking the bear

TWENTY-FOUR years ago, just months into his first term as Russia’s second post-Soviet president, Vladimir Putin was pictured partying at a dacha...

21.08.2024 2

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Beyond the javelin

A SINGULAR athletic triumph in Paris triggered spontaneous jubilation in the run-up to Independence Day in a nation that might otherwise have...

14.08.2024 10

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Diplomacy deficit

PAEANS to Joe Biden’s diplomatic skills have been flowing since the fruition of a prisoner exchange between Russia and the West. The deal...

07.08.2024 2

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Caracas conundrum

THERE was barely a peep from the self-ordained paragons of democratic virtue when Paul Kagame was returned to power in Rwanda two weeks ago with...

31.07.2024 8

Dawn

Mahir Ali

No joy in Dhaka

THERE is a sense of irony in watching tanks and armoured personnel carriers on the streets of Dhaka, defending a government that traces its lineage...

24.07.2024 10

Dawn

Mahir Ali

After the fall

IT’S emblematic of the current moment in American politics that the incumbent president’s physical and mental health remains a bigger cause for...

17.07.2024 2

Dawn

Mahir Ali