Adil Najam

The very first post on ATP came online at 1:18:49PM on June 11, 2006. This current post marks the completion of exactly one year of this blog. It has been quite a ride.

I had never expected this to become anything more than a vehicle for some catharsis on Pakistan and Pakistani issues that would be read, maybe, by a few friends. Instead, I have been amazed at how fast word spread on the web and how many new friends we have made on that way. I just checked our stats meter and found that over this year we have had well over one million (1,000,000) page views and and just under half a million separate visits. We have had over 600 posts, some 17,000 comments, and contributions from 44 authors. A rather amusing manifestation of this success is that even though we are quite clearly not a news site, Google News now considers us to be a news site and reglarly highlights our posts in its Pakistan news section!

The surprise and sentiments that I had expressed at ATP’s grwhen we reached our 100th post, and then again in our ‘moving forward’ post when we turned this into a team blog, and yet again in the post announcing our new domain name (Pakistaniat.com), and finally in our 6-month anniversary post still remain true today; only more so.

For all the support from all the people who have made this blog their regular visiting ground, I say ‘Thank You.’ Its been quite a ride. But a fun ride (mostly!). The work has grown tremendously and the sometimes as one has to baby-sit childish anger bursts in the comments section and clean up the mess of misbehavior of some commenters, one does feel a little down. But the ‘up’ moments have been far more numerous and far more fullfiling then then the ‘down’ moments. For all those ‘up’ moments; thank you.

But now it is time to move on.

Raza Rumi

I am averse to the ratings and rankings that characterize the junk-journalism of our times. Much like the embedded style of reporting such a view remains partial and often ignorant of the nuances and layers of subtext that are almost unachievable in the pop-view of the world.

Readers might question this apparent paradox as on the one hand I am making my top-five list and on the other I am also being critical. Well, well, this is kosher from a South Asian perspective as we remain a mythical-modern bundle of contradictions.

Guest Post by Kruman

The single most important issue raised in the affidavit filed by the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mr Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was that the president did not have a reference from the Prime Minister when they met in the GHQ on March 9, 2007. The president has kept insisting that he merely performed his constitutional duty to forward the reference submitted by the Prime Minister to the SJC.

This statement by the president was challenged (by implication) in the affidavit filed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP). CJP’s affidavit stated that the president only had hand-written notes during their meeting on March 9th i.e. no reference had been submitted by the PM till then. This is a very serious allegation against the president as it implies that the presidential reference was prepared after the CJP refused to resign on March 9. It was expected that the PM would file an affidavit (in support of Musharraf’s position) clarifying that he (Shaukat Aziz) had submitted a reference to the president prior to the president/CJP meeting on march 9 2007.