Future – Soch Writing

Havelian aur Hava: On Architecture and Air Pollution

sarah shamim — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 11:52:42 +0000

Meandering through the sehans, gliding across glossy mosaic flooring, and looking out the quintessential verandas, arms resting on the powdery, colosseum-like white pillars, Ali reminisces what his decades-old house in Karachi used to be before it got renovated. “The only difference is that it has been modernized”, he explains while talking about the aspects of his […]

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Anti-Ahmadi hashtags: Initiated by Jamiat Ulema Islam, supported by all

Asad Pabani — Fri, 29 May 2020 11:08:46 +0000

Anti-Ahmadi hatred in Pakistan now has a new outlet: Twitter. On 10 May 2020, three hashtags targeting the Ahmadiyya community popped up nearly simultaneously, racking up tens of thousands of tweets each to become the most trending topics on Pakistani Twitter. The intended message behind the hashtags was fairly self-explanatory. #AhmadisAreNotMuslims conveyed its message quite […]

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#SackShireenMazari

Asad Pabani — Sat, 09 May 2020 11:03:11 +0000

Twitter accounts run by supporters of political parties play a crucial role in promoting a party’s message in the online sphere. In just the last few days, the top trending hashtags in Pakistan have included #وزیراعظم‌نوازشریف (#PrimeMinisterNawazSharif) and #imrankhanhumapkaysathhain (#WeAreWithYouImranKhan), which were ostensibly started by supporters of Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan […]

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Apocalypse babies

Sarah Elahi — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 05:14:21 +0000

WHEN MY SONwas three, he was obsessed with dinosaurs. This was to be expected. For reasons I haven’t ever understood, prehistoric lizards are one of the first introductions our children have to science, so liking them is practically a prerequisite for going to school. A friend of mine was delighted when he heard about it. […]

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Does your pichal pairi have a guitar-slinging boyfriend?

Hamza Sarfraz — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 11:05:00 +0000

IN SADIA KHATRI’Sshort story The City of Mitr, there are no chaar deevari, no constricting corners, no ceilings. Instead: “a thousand circles overlapping, interweaving, sparkling in their stacked orbits, an intricate geometry… a miracle of light.” On the long night of Shab-e-Yalda, “the womxn lie awake all night, spending their minds and bodies on food […]

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City of slights

Sarah Dara — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 11:00:25 +0000

WHEN AMNA ABBASdecided to move out, she held a little tea party to introduce her prospective roommate to her parents—a modern twist on the old notion of chai pe bulaana. She’d found her on a women-only Facebook group for roommates and rented properties in Karachi. They all gathered in the drawing room—both sets of parents […]

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She had a child through a sperm donor. Nadra refuses to recognise it.

Annam Lodhi — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 11:00:52 +0000

AREEBA* MOVED TOPakistan in 2014. Her parents were Pakistani, but she had been raised abroad and had made a life for herself there, working in social housing, and raising a young daughter. Creeping austerity and a sudden redundancy at work compelled her to look east; she had fond memories of her visits to Pakistan as […]

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A Web of Disinformation

Annam Lodhi — Tue, 19 Nov 2019 06:00:22 +0000

Over 265 fake local news sites in more than 65 countries are managed by an Indian network, designed to influence the European Union and the United Nations by criticizing Pakistan.

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Something stinks in the Capital

Annam Lodhi — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 08:24:52 +0000

On August 14, a blanket ban on plastic bags was imposed in the federal capital. Islamabad’s two million residents each use between three and four plastic bags a day. Soch investigates the plastic ban.

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“Many accounts on Twitter are created for propaganda”

Maham Javaid — Wed, 29 May 2019 04:00:54 +0000

Rizwan Saeed, an online big data researcher, talks to Soch about his frustration with ‘propaganda fake accounts.'

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Facebook and fifth generation warfare

Asad Pabani — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 09:35:14 +0000

Late last year Major General Asif Ghafoor, Director General, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), created quite a stir by talking about the growth of “fifth generation warfare” and its implications for the future of journalism. In a press conference last December, he stressed that the “media has a front line role in 5th generation warfare…the power which the […]

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The truth behind India’s airstrikes in Balakot

Asad Pabani — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 09:19:46 +0000

And thoughts on South Asia perpetually being on the brink of nuclear war On 26th February 2019, for the first time in over 50 years, the Indian Air Force (IAF) carried out airstrikes in undisputed Pakistani territory. Under the cover of darkness, Indian jets entered Pakistani airspace around 3 AM and detonated their payload near […]

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Afghanistan and Syria’s role in geopolitics

Asad Pabani — Wed, 25 Apr 2018 08:54:51 +0000

There is often talk of World War III in hypothetical terms. A world is painted in a doomsday scenario where the mightiest militaries on earth are facing off against each other. Using some of the most lethal weapons ever known to man, they rain down death and destruction, reducing whole cities to mere rubble within […]

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Pakistan’s biggest threat: contaminated water

Asad Pabani — Sun, 15 Apr 2018 08:46:17 +0000

Pakistan faces a crisis — a crisis that is behind an estimated 30–40% of all deaths, including 50,000 children, every year. But the killer is not some shadowy terrorist group or a mysterious virus strain, it is simply water. Every year thousands of Pakistanis fall victim to diseases like diarrhea, typhoid, cholera, dysentery and hepatitis, with the […]

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