Manzoor Ali Shah

The situation in NWFP is gradually slipping away from the control of government in the face of mounting militant’s attacks in the province and FATA. Amid the fears that the Peshawar too could fall to the militants, authorities have launched an operation in the neighboring Khyber Agency against a militant organization Lashkar-e-Islam (LI), which had established its sway over the agency and was also using it as a launching pad to attack Peshawar.

The photo above shows tanks parked in a Government installation at Hayatabad, Peshawar. Photo by Riaz Anjum at APP

The operation launched against the LI signifies a turning point in the coalition government policy towards FATA and NWFP, initially aimed at pacifying the troubled areas through dialogue despite intense US and NATO pressure.

It is first major military offensive launched in the Khyber Agency in the west of Peshawar, on a key trade route connecting Afghanistan and Pakistan through historic Khyber Pass.

Raza Rumi

A little news item that appeared a few weeks ago was ignored by our all-knowing analysts and TV channels. Reportedly, the Federal Public Service Commission failed to recruit all the vacancies that were advertised for the CSS competitive examination held in 2007. Out of 290 available posts, the number of successful candidates in the 2007 CSS competition was merely 190, leaving almost 100 vacancies unoccupied.

In the photo above Founder of Pakistan Mohammad Ali Jinnah is seen talking to Pakistani Civil Servants (circa 1947)

Last year, too, the government could not get enough number of successful CSS candidates to fill in the available posts and 47 vacancies could not be filled. Such instances have occurred before but given the state of unemployment this is, to put it mildly, shocking.

The truth of the matter is that entering the civil service is no longer an alluring career option for the talented young men and women of this country. Perhaps, the greatest damage to the attractiveness of the civil service came in the wake of the devolution plan that rendered the most coveted service group — District Management Group — unpalatable. Within days, the district administrators had no prescribed career-paths and that they had to be subservient to small time political cronies of the central political elites.

Owais Mughal

Following photo is courtesy of Farhan Khan of APP. You can make your own story of what is going on but here is my ‘tasweeri kahani’ (photo story). Letters in bold are facts. Rest is fiction. On the hot sunny afternoon of June 27, 2008, some nieghborhood boys gathered under a tree on Airport Road, Hyderabad. Somebody brought a Carrom Board from their home and then they played for the title championship.

A donkey cart boy also stopped by to get a peek at the Final.