Munaeem's Blog

He wasn’t old enough to fight. But he understood enough to choose truth over silence—and death over humiliation. > "Uncle, am I not on the path of truth?" — Qasem ibn Hasan, age 13, before entering the battlefield There are stories in history that overpower logic. Not because they are unbelievable—but because they are unbearably real. The story of Qasem ibn Hasan, the 13-year-old martyr of Karbala, is one of them. He wasn't a general. He had no army. He barely had a sword that fit his small hands. But his courage has echoed louder than many conquerors. The Blood of Prophets, the Heart of a Child Qasem was the son of Hasan ibn Ali, the second Shia Imam, and the nephew of Husayn ibn Ali, the iconic leader who refused to bow to the tyranny of Yazid. Born into the Prophet Muhammad’s family, Qasem inherited not power or privilege—but persecution. By the time Karbala happened, he had already seen his father poisoned and his family hunted. A Request That Shook the...

  They said it would bring development. Roads, railways, prosperity. But as Chinese cameras line our cities and facial recognition systems map our streets, one wonders—did we trade our sovereignty for connectivity? The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was sold to us as the “game changer.” A Marshall Plan for the 21st century. But beneath the glossy infrastructure and soft loans lies a quieter story—one of surveillance, data, and the digital encirclement of a state too eager to be rescued. The Surface Illusion: Roads and Railways Let’s begin with what the public sees: Over $62 billion pledged for energy and transport Highways connecting Gwadar to Kashgar Power plants springing up across Punjab and Balochistan But under these symbols of progress lie deeper cables—literal and metaphorical. CPEC Phase 2 brings not just development, but digitization. Fiber-optic corridors, Huawei-built Safe City projects, and surveillance hubs are quietly embedding themselves into...

“History doesn’t repeat itself,” said Mark Twain. “But it often rhymes.” In Ireland, that rhyme has a distinctly Palestinian rhythm. You feel it in Dáil speeches. You see it in student protests. You hear it in the raw moral certainty of Irish voices denouncing occupation, checkpoints, demolitions. It’s not just solidarity—it’s personal. And Brussels? Brussels sees policy, legal frameworks, and diplomatic balancing acts. Ireland sees eviction notices in East Jerusalem and hears the ghosts of 1847 knocking. That difference matters. It explains not just Ireland’s vocal support for Palestine—but also why this support unnerves others, especially Europe’s Jewish communities. The Politics of Pain Recognition There’s something profound in how post-colonial nations perceive injustice abroad. It’s not abstract—it’s memory. Ireland remembers being dispossessed, partitioned, surveilled, second-class. It remembers famines blamed on laziness and landlords who shipped out wheat while chil...

The general salutes. The crowd cheers. A fighter jet slices the sky. And once again, Pakistan forgets who’s really running the show. But behind every parade, every press briefing, and every rousing anthem lies something older and far more strategic: Survival. From General Zia-ul-Haq’s prayer rug to General Asim Munir’s naval pageantry, Pakistan’s military doesn’t just fight wars. It rewrites its role in history—again and again. Zia: The Pious General Who Became the State Let’s start where the myth solidified. General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq didn’t just overthrow a civilian government in 1977. He overthrew Pakistan’s very idea of itself. Under Zia, the Army recast its identity—from a conventional force to a moral vanguard. He brought Islam into the barracks. Into the classrooms. Into the Constitution. And most crucially: into the uniform. The Pakistan Army became not just a protector of borders, but a guardian of Islamic values. This wasn’t just ideological. It was strategic. Wi...

It always begins the same way. A crisis at the border. A statement from the ISPR. A suspiciously uniform media chorus: “The nation stands united behind its defenders.” No questions. No follow-ups. Just loyalty, volume… and silence. In Pakistan, the battle for truth doesn’t always involve bullets. Sometimes, it’s fought with headlines. When the Military Becomes the Editor Pakistan’s military doesn’t just guard the borders. It guards the narrative. From the controlled tones of state-run PTV to the cautious phrasing of prime-time anchors, it’s no secret that Rawalpindi casts a long shadow over what the nation hears and sees—especially in moments of diplomatic tension or military action. • During the Kargil War (1999), Pakistani media was given a sanitized version of battlefield realities. • In the post-Balakot fallout (2019), domestic coverage largely mirrored ISPR briefings, while critical voices were drowned out. • Following cross-border tensions in 2024’s Operation Sindhudu...

It begins with a march. Boots echo on the parade ground. Flags ripple in calculated symmetry. A general steps forward, medals glinting, and delivers a speech that sounds eerily familiar—full of resolve, warnings, and the ever-glorious nation. But here’s the thing. He’s not just speaking to the cadets standing before him. He’s speaking to the country. And often, to himself. Speeches That March in Formation When Pakistan Army Chief General Asim Munir stood at the Navy’s passing out parade this June and declared that Pakistan would “respond swiftly and befittingly” to any Indian aggression, it made headlines. But was it really news? Military speeches like these follow a formula. The enemy is bold. We are righteous. The past was painful, but glorious. The future—if threatened—will be catastrophic. From Islamabad to Tel Aviv, from New Delhi to Pyongyang, generals do not simply defend territory. They defend narratives. Take Pakistan. Since 1947, its national identity has been dee...

 What if the most devastating military defeat in modern Arab history reveals less about battlefield tactics and more about the fundamental incompatibility between authoritarian governance and contemporary warfare? Consider this puzzle: three Arab armies backed by Soviet weaponry, outnumbering Israeli forces by overwhelming margins, united against a common enemy. Yet within six days, over 20,000 Arab soldiers lay dead, entire air forces were obliterated, and territories fell that remain occupied today. The war's outcome was essentially decided in the first hour. This raises an uncomfortable question that extends far beyond 1967: why do numerically superior forces with advanced equipment consistently underperform against smaller, better-organized adversaries? The answer illuminates patterns that stretch from Pakistan's Kargil miscalculations to contemporary Russian struggles in Ukraine. The Mythology of Arab Unity The "united" Arab front of 1967 embodied a fundament...

  "یہ قوم پھر دھاڑ سننا چاہتی ہے" — جنرل عاصم منیر کی تقریر کا اصل مطلب کیا تھا؟ بات الفاظ کی نہیں تھی۔ بات لہجے کی تھی۔ ایک ایسا لہجہ جو پرچم، پریڈ اور عسکری فخر میں لپٹا ہوا تھا۔ اور پھر کہیں، جنرل عاصم منیر کی آواز میں ایک انجان سا خم آ گیا۔ یہ محض ایک رسمی تقریر نہیں تھی۔ یہ ایک داخلی بحران پر چڑھا ہوا پالش تھا۔ سوال یہ ہے: کیا وہ بھارت کو مخاطب کر رہے تھے، یا پاکستان کے اپنے بکھرے ہوئے گھر کو؟ 🇵🇰 وہ تقریر جس پر سب بات کر رہے ہیں سیدھی بات کرتے ہیں۔ جنرل منیر نے بھارت پر براہِ راست حملے کی بات نہیں کی۔ نہ ہی کوئی نئی جنگی کارروائیوں کا اعلان کیا۔ لیکن... انہوں نے یہ ضرور کہا کہ بھارت کی قیادت "بے بصیرت" ہے، اور حالیہ برسوں میں بھارت نے "بلا جواز جارحیت" کی ہے۔ انہوں نے یہ بھی کہا کہ پاکستان نے ہمیشہ "تحمل اور بردباری" کا مظاہرہ کیا — لیکن آئندہ ایسا ممکن نہیں ہوگا۔ یہ سن کر بظاہر کچھ نیا نہیں لگتا، کیونکہ ہر ملک کے پاس اپنے جذباتی عسکری نغمے ہوتے ہیں۔ مگر اصل فرق سیاق و سباق کا ہے۔ یہ تقریر ایسے وقت میں کی گئی جب آپریشن سند...

It wasn't the words that rattled people. It was the tone. Measured. Martial. Laced with patriotic gravitas. And then, somewhere between the familiar cadence of Pakistan's military parades and the barely disguised digs at New Delhi, something shifted. General Asim Munir, Pakistan's Army Chief, stood before the graduating cadets of the Navy and declared, in essence: “We are ready.” Not for war, perhaps. But for relevance. The question is—was he talking to India, or to his own troubled house? 🇵🇰 The Speech Everyone's Talking About Let's cut through the noise. General Munir did not directly declare war on India. He didn't announce new military actions. He didn't even say anything particularly new. But he did imply that India's leadership is reckless. That New Delhi has launched acts of “unprovoked aggression” under the guise of counterterrorism. That Pakistan had responded with "restraint and maturity"—but may not hold back next time....

  “Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue. Now Google just takes content by force... The definition of theft.” — Daniel Coffey, News Media Alliance They told us the future would be digital. They didn’t tell us it might also be disposable. Print is dead, they said. TV is dying. And now, online journalism—the last bastion of real-time, widely shared, deeply reported media—may be flatlining in plain sight. And strangely, it’s not Facebook or Twitter this time. It’s your friendly neighborhood AI chatbot . The Rise of AI, The Fall of Traffic In case you missed it, Google’s AI Overviews now offers users a slick, summarized version of what they’re searching for—right at the top of the page. It pulls this info from various websites, which get no compensation and, often, no clicks either. Why scroll down and click when a neat little blurb already answers your question? Here’s what that means in numbers: In the past decade, ...

  It doesn’t look like war. There are no sirens, no tanks, no fiery speeches in parliaments. Instead, it’s a Korean drama that quietly tops charts in Latin America. A Chinese influencer doing mukbang in flawless English. An Indian thriller about espionage that somehow feels more compelling than real-world intelligence reports. We scroll. We watch. We hum along. And without realizing it, we’re absorbing values, aesthetics, narratives—sometimes more willingly than through years of diplomacy. This isn’t a coincidence. It’s strategy. When Culture Becomes the Weapon Once upon a time, nations projected power with missiles and military bases. Now? They send out streaming deals. Take South Korea. Twenty years ago, K-pop and K-dramas were domestic indulgences. Today, they are global obsessions. BTS, BLACKPINK, Crash Landing on You , Parasite —these aren’t just hits. They’re exports. Cultural ambassadors. Soft-power artillery wrapped in glitter and melodrama. “Soft power is t...