Owais Mughal

(Updated results post, here).

Olympic Games start in Beijing tomorrow. This year, Pakistan has sent a 21-players plus 16-officials = 37 member contingent to take part in 4 sports viz. Athletics, Men’s Hockey, Swimming and Shooting. Pakistan qulaified to play in Hockey where as entry to rest of the three sports has been on the basis of ‘wild-cards’.

Pakistan’s chances of winning major medals at Beijing are slim to none, but that was not always so. Plus, this is the Olympics and one can always hope for a surprise. Sometimes you can even get it!

Adil Najam

Since yesterday the “I” word – impeachment – has begun to be thrown around a lot.

Some quarters seem to think that it just happen this time. Others suggest that it is more talk than action and the numbers needed to pull this are still not there.

Coming out of the “critical” Nawaz Sharif-Asif Zardari meetings one keeps wondering how much of this is an effort to keep the coalition going and how much is a real push to change the essential political equations of Pakistan. There are reports that Gen. Musharraf is taking this move seriously enough to cancel his trip to China (to attend the Olympics opening ceremony). On the other hand some of Gen. Musharraf’s supporters are claiming that no such cancellation has happened. We do know, however, that he is taking this challenge seriously and lining up his supporters.

Darwaish

Dr. Aafia’s Siddiqui story has been haunting most Pakistanis for months now. Famously known as ‘Prisoner 650’ at Bagram Base in Afghanistan, she is one of the missing persons of Pakistan, wanted by FBI on alleged links with Al-Qaeda.

Dr. Afia Siddiqui, a highly educated researcher who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, for about 10 years and did her PhD in genetics, mysteriously disappeared from Karachi in March 2003 along with her three children. Since then, US and Pakistani officials have continuously denied any knowledge about her.

It was only after British prisoner Moazzam Begg mentioned her in his book The Enemy Combatant that Human Rights Organizations and activists, British journalist Yvonne Ridley and MP Lord Nazir in particular, raised voice for Dr. Aafia kept in solitary confinement and her three children. A specially disturbing part of this story is that fate of her three children, aged between one month and 7 years at the time of her kidnapping, is still unknown.