Beenish Javed

Maleeha Lodhi is a well known expert on Pakistan and U.S. relations. I spoke to her about the complicated relationship between two countries and if she sees any improvement in ties among two countries. Beenish: Is the recent engagement between Pakistan and U.S. officials, especially the visit of Marc Grossman to Pakistan, has helped in improving ties between two countries or not? Maleeha:  The U.S. has not responded to many demands of Pakistan.  U.S has not offered an apology on Salala check post attacks, payments of Coalition Support Fund to Pakistan have not been made, and no agreement on drones have been made. The parliamentary recommendations are very clear on stopping drone attacks, but the U.S. has not agreed to stop them. I think it’s not only about opening up of NATO supply routes, the U.S. has not responded positively on what Pakistan wants. We have to see if the deadlock between two countries can be resolved or not? And whether the new terms of engagem...

The third episode of Diplomatic Enclave went really well. This episode includes a quick roundup of last week's news. A great report on Iran's cultural aspects and a report explaining the importance of this week's Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran Strategic Agreements. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLmuB81AROw For translation in English like the page http://www.facebook.com/pages/DiplomaticEnclave/168947873189364

Malala Yousafzai is a fourteen year old girl of Swat, Pakistan. She has recently been awarded the first National Peace Award of Pakistan. The award in future will  be associated with Malala's name. Between 2007 and 2009,  there was a military operation going on in Swat against militants. Militants were bombing girls's schools throughout Swat, and killing people who were favoring the military and government of pakistan.This was the time when people were shifting to other cities, when people had hidden themselves in their homes. But Malala was brave enough to talk to national and international media. She openely talked about girls education, how harmful bombing girls schools would be. She became a part of Newyork Times documentaries , A school girl's odyessy , and A class dismissed in Swat . She also was a regular writer for BBC Urdu website. On 20th Decemeber 2011, she  recieved Pakistan's first peace award, in recognition of her services to raise awareness abou...

On Tuesday 21st Sep 2010 Sarah, my friend who also works as a news reporter called me to join her on a day trip to Swat. I was a bit reluctant to accept the invitation as I had taken three days off with the Eid holidays to attend quite an amazing wedding in Peshawar. But somehow she convinced me and I was ready for an adventurous trip. So early in the morning at around 7 we got in to a 20.5 million armored vehicle. This was World food program’s car.  We were traveling with them as media reporters to cover their projects in Swat. This seemed to be a cool, comfortable car and I was just excited to travel in an armored vehicleJ. Anyway we had a pretty good ride to Swat without any lunch break we went to a village where we met the WFP people, they served us food in a small village house. It was nice they served us fruit which they picked from the tree in their home. It was a very simple home, the women in that home couldn’t speak Urdu and the girls there had only stu...