Ebola Outbreak-The deadly Epidemic

To watch Shakarparian today is to mourn a broken promise. Not a fleeting vow, but a masterplan—conceived with purpose, codified on paper, and abandoned by design. I went through archives at Bazar Road, Iqbal Hall G-7, poring over the original master plan drawn up in 1960 by the great Greek architect and city planner Konstantinos Apostolos Doxiadis and his team. It was there that I first understood what Shakarparian was always meant to be. Doxiadis and his fellow planners did not design this triangle-shaped green expanse near Zero Point as an afterthought, a leftover patch of land between roads. They designated it, deliberately and explicitly, as the lungs of Islamabad — a temperature regulator, a natural sound barrier, a groundwater recharge zone, and a protective forest without which the city’s clean air was never meant to exist. This was not sentiment. This was engineering. And we have spent the decades since betraying it. Islamabad in 1961 was home to barely 117,000 people. Today it holds well over 2.4 million. That growth was not an accident — it was, in part, the very success of Doxiadis’s vision: a green, livable, breathable capital that drew people in from across the country and beyond. But success has a cruel irony here, because the same city that grew because of its green lungs has spent decades quietly cutting into them. Between 1961 and 2024, Islamabad’s temperature has already climbed by 5 degrees Celsius, with projections warning of a further 0.7 degrees by 2039 and 2.2 degrees by 2069. This is the urban heat island effect, and it is not an abstraction — it is Doxiadis’s temperature regulator being dismantled, piece by piece, exactly as he warned it must not be. Shakarparian itself covers roughly 1,376 hectares, formally absorbed into the Margalla Hills National Park in 1980, sitting almost at the very heart of the capital — an emerald set into the city’s crown, as it deserves to be called. A biodiversity survey conducted in November 2014 found 155 animal species sheltering within it: 23 species of mammals, 104 species of birds spanning 16 orders and 42 families, 22 species of reptiles, and 6 species of amphibians. The same survey catalogued more than 661 plant species across 28 families, with six distinct dominant vegetation communities knitting the forest floor together. This is not a park. This is a living, breathing ecological archive sitting in the geographic center of a national capital — a rarity almost nowhere else replicated in the world. It was Roedad Khan — the legendary civil servant and statesman — who understood the fragility of this inheritance early enough to act. In 1989 he founded the Margalla Hills Society, and for decades that institution has done more than most government departments to keep the wider Margalla ecosystem intact. But Shakarparian, sitting apart within it, has not been so fortunate. It has instead become a recurring casualty of the very authority meant to protect it — the Capital Development Authority itself. Piece by piece, lease by lease, CDA has allowed Shakarparian’s protective forest cover to be carved away. Look at what now occupies ground that was meant to remain forest: the Parade Ground, the Pak-China Friendship Centre, the Islamabad Club, the Gun and Country Club, Lok Virsa, an open-air theatre, and a string of upscale hotels and restaurants. Each addition was, in its own file, justified. Together, they are a forest reduced to a backdrop for institutions that no longer need it and increasingly cannot coexist with it. This has happened in direct violation of Regulation 4(3)(b) of the ICT Zoning Regulations of Islamabad, which exists for the explicit purpose of preventing exactly this kind of land-use change, allegedly under sustained political pressure. Satellite imagery from Landsat and Sentinel spanning the last twenty years tells the story without need for further commentary: the southwest region of Shakarparian shows a stark, measurable retreat of forest cover. The judiciary, at least once, was willing to look squarely at this. On January 11, 2022, the Islamabad High Court delivered its verdict in Prof. Zahid Baig Mirza versus Capital Development Authority, and the ruling was unambiguous: the shifting of the Parade Ground into Zone 3, the widening of roads through the forest, and the construction of the China Friendship Centre inside Shakarparian all violated the ICT Zoning Regulations. It was, on paper, a vindication of everything Doxiadis intended and everything CDA had ignored. A court verdict that is not enforced, however, is simply another document gathering dust the way the original master plan itself so nearly did. And here I have to say something that will not make me popular in certain circles of this city: the NGO sector stationed in Islamabad has failed Shakarparian as thoroughly as CDA has bulldozed it. The single biggest failure of these organizations is that they will not raise their own voice — they wait, always, for the government to raise it first, as though advocacy requires official permission. That is not activism. That is choreography. Too many of these NGOs are, in practice, family businesses wearing the language of conservation: leadership passed quietly within the same households for years, boards that never rotate, and a business model built not around planting a single tree in Shakarparian but around producing glossy reports, attending conferences, and mastering the art of recycling the same handful of buzzwords — resilience, sustainability, nature-based solutions — into slightly different sentences for slightly different donors. They are experts in rephrasing a crisis. They are not experts in stopping one. When the chainsaws reached the H-8 green belt, it was a lone campaigner and a worried student who spoke up first, not the well-funded organisations whose entire mandate is supposed to be exactly this. This failure is made worse by the fact that the government itself is not short of obligations it has already signed onto. Pakistan is a party to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which binds it to conserve representative ecosystems and halt biodiversity loss

The historical and cultural affinities between Pakistan and Turkiye have long provided a foundation for cooperation in diverse fields. In recent years, this relationship has increasingly extended to the sphere of higher education, where Turkiye has emerged as a significant destination for Pakistani students. The confluence of geographical proximity, shared religious and cultural values, and the expanding academic infrastructure in Turkiye has made it an attractive alternative to traditional destinations in Europe and North America. This shift is not merely a matter of student mobility but also reflects a broader attempt to institutionalize academic linkages between the two countries. Turkiye currently hosts more than 208 universities, of which 129 are public and 79 are private. A number of these institutions, including Middle East Technical University, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul University, and Koç University, are recognized in international rankings and maintain active research programs. The Turkish higher education system operates within the framework of the Bologna Process, which ensures compatibility with European academic standards and facilitates the international recognition of degrees. This structural alignment, combined with the availability of English-medium programs in many universities, has lowered barriers for international students, including those from Pakistan. The internationalization of Turkish higher education is reflected in the enrollment of over 300,000 foreign students from more than 170 countries. Pakistani students constitute a growing segment of this population, with estimates ranging between 8,000 and 10,000. The annual growth rate of Pakistani student enrollment in Turkiye is approximately 20 percent, indicating a sustained interest. Several factors contribute to this trend. First, the Türkiye Bursları program, administered by the Turkish government, provides comprehensive support that includes tuition, accommodation, health insurance, monthly stipend, and airfare. Each year, more than 500 Pakistani students benefit from this program. Second, the cost of education in Turkish public universities remains comparatively low, with annual fees ranging from 300 to 800 US dollars. Private universities offer programs between 2,000 and 6,000 US dollars annually. Third, admission procedures are relatively accessible, as many institutions do not require standardized tests such as the SAT or GRE. Additionally, the linguistic affinity between Urdu and Turkish, with over a thousand shared words, eases the process of language acquisition for Pakistani students. The academic fields that attract Pakistani students are diverse. Engineering and technology, particularly in areas such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and civil engineering, are in high demand. Medical and pharmaceutical sciences also draw significant interest, given Turkiye’s advanced healthcare infrastructure and research facilities. Other prominent fields include Islamic studies, international relations, social sciences, and media and communication. The latter has gained particular attention following the global popularity of Turkish television dramas, which has increased cultural familiarity and academic interest in media studies. Beyond student mobility, the potential for institutional collaboration between Pakistan and Turkiye remains considerable. The Higher Education Commission of Pakistan and the Turkish Council of Higher Education – YÖK have entered into agreements to promote academic exchange. Several Pakistani universities, including NUST and COMSATS, have signed memoranda of understanding with Turkish institutions to facilitate student and faculty exchange. These initiatives, while still limited in scope, provide a basis for deeper engagement. Joint research projects represent another avenue of cooperation. Turkiye’s strengths in defense technology, renewable energy, and urban development complement Pakistan’s expertise in agriculture, water resource management, and nuclear science. Collaborative research in these areas could address shared regional challenges and contribute to technological advancement in both countries. The development of dual-degree programs is another promising direction. Such programs would allow students to earn degrees from institutions in both Pakistan and Turkiye, thereby enhancing the global portability of their qualifications. Faculty exchange programs could further support this process by enabling the sharing of pedagogical approaches and research methodologies. Additionally, the establishment of language and cultural centers, such as Urdu departments in Turkish universities and Turkish language institutes in Pakistan, would strengthen intercultural understanding and provide linguistic support for students and researchers. In conclusion, Turkiye offers Pakistani students an opportunity to pursue quality higher education in an environment that is both academically rigorous and culturally familiar. The combination of affordable tuition, scholarship support, and institutional compatibility makes Turkiye a viable alternative to more expensive destinations. At the same time, the expansion of academic linkages between Pakistani and Turkish universities has the potential to contribute to broader cooperation in education, research, and technology. For Pakistani students, studying in Turkiye represents not only an academic pursuit but also participation in the strengthening of bilateral relations between two countries with shared historical and cultural ties.

By Ali Dar Every few weeks, Artificial Intelligence seems to produce another headline. A new model. A larger investment. A faster processor. A company valued in the hundreds of billions. The conversation has become almost entirely centered on the race to build more powerful machines.   I follow these developments with genuine interest. But I often find myself wondering whether we are all looking in the wrong direction. History has a curious habit of reminding us that the inventors of transformative technologies are not always the ones who transform society. James Watt improved the steam engine. It was factories that transformed economies. The internet was built by engineers. It was entrepreneurs, educators, governments and ordinary citizens who changed the way we lived because of it. Technology begins the story. Institutions decide how the story ends. That distinction has occupied my thoughts for some time. Perhaps because I spend more time thinking about government than algorithms. Perhaps because the questions that matter most are no longer technological. They are institutional. People often speak about bureaucracy as though it were an outdated mistake waiting to be dismantled. I see it differently. Modern government was designed for the world in which it existed. Information travelled slowly. Documents moved from one office to another because there was no practical alternative. Decisions climbed through layers of administration because knowledge itself moved through those same layers. Those systems were not inefficient by accident. They were remarkably effective for their time. They created order, consistency and accountability. They allowed governments to function at a scale that had previously been impossible. The challenge today is not that bureaucracy failed. The challenge is that the world around it has changed more quickly than bureaucracy itself. For the first time in history, governments are not struggling because they lack information. They are struggling because they have too much of it. A district administration receives more information in a single week than previous generations of public servants might have encountered in an entire year. Hospitals generate enormous volumes of clinical data. Schools continuously measure educational outcomes. Agriculture increasingly depends upon satellite imagery, weather intelligence and real-time market information. The constraint is no longer access. It is interpretation. That, I believe, changes everything. Artificial Intelligence is often described as a technological revolution. I am beginning to think it is something else. It is an institutional revolution. It’s greatest contribution may not be writing reports or generating images. It’s greatest contribution may be helping institutions distinguish what is important from what is merely available. That is a subtle difference. It is also an enormously important one. Governments have spent the past two decades becoming digital. That was necessary. Files became electronic. Services moved online. Citizens could access information without standing in long queues. These were meaningful achievements. Yet digitisation should never be confused with transformation. Replacing paper with screens does not automatically produce better judgement. A digital government stores information more efficiently. An intelligent government learns from it. There is a profound difference between the two. One preserves knowledge. The other improves decisions. This is why I believe the next chapter of public administration will not be defined by technology alone. It will be defined by institutional learning. Can governments recognise emerging problems before they become crises? Can public services adapt more quickly to changing circumstances? Can policymakers spend less time searching for information and more time exercising judgement? These are leadership questions. Technology merely provides new tools with which to answer them. Around the world, different countries are beginning to explore these possibilities in different ways. Estonia has shown what becomes possible when digital infrastructure is treated as a public utility rather than a technical project. Singapore continues to demonstrate that institutional discipline remains one of the greatest competitive advantages any nation can possess. Neither model should be copied uncritically. Every society carries its own history, institutions and public expectations. Punjab will do the same. Our objective should never be to imitate another government’s technology. It should be to strengthen our own capacity to govern. That is the thinking behind The Office of AI. Contrary to popular perception, its purpose is not simply to introduce Artificial Intelligence into government. Technology, on its own, has never transformed institutions. People do. Leadership does. Culture does. The real ambition is more demanding than digital transformation. It is to cultivate public institutions that learn continuously, coordinate more effectively and ultimately deliver better outcomes for citizens. That is a much harder challenge. It is also a far more worthwhile one. I suspect history will remember this period rather differently from the way we describe it today. It may not be remembered as the moment machines became intelligent. It may be remembered as the moment governments were compelled to become more thoughtful. Perhaps that is the real revolution. Not smarter software but smarter institutions. And if that proves to be true, the defining governments of this century will not be those that purchased the most advanced technology. They will be the ones that developed the wisdom to use it well. About the Author Ali Dar is a software engineer by education, business leader and Advisor to the Chief Minister of Punjab on Artificial Intelligence and Special Initiatives. He writes on the future of governance, Artificial Intelligence, digital transformation and public policy.

I have lost count of how many times I have written this sentence. Trump announces a possible dialogue with Iran. Iran denies it within hours. Then Pakistan quietly steps in to keep the peace alive. I sit down to write about it again, and I feel a strange mixture of hope and exhaustion. This cycle has repeated itself so many times since this war began that I could write it in my sleep. Let me walk you through what happened this time, because I think you deserve to understand the pattern as clearly as I do. President Donald Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social and declared that Washington and Tehran are talking. He said Iran may not admit it, but both nations are working through a problem that has lingered for decades. He accused Iranian leaders of playing a double game. He said the outcome will be one of two things. Either a deal gets made, or Iran faces what he called complete surrender. He also insisted that America will never let Iran get its hands on a nuclear weapon. Then, right on cue, Iran said no. Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei stood before reporters and rejected every word of it. He said there are no negotiations happening with the United States. He said the only contact right now involves Oman, and it concerns nothing more than keeping ships moving safely through the Strait of Hormuz. I want you to notice something here. This is not a new argument. I have watched this exact exchange play out again and again. One side claims talks are happening. The other side flatly denies it. And somewhere in the middle, the truth probably sits quietly, waiting for someone honest enough to admit it. This is where Pakistan enters the picture, as it so often does. Turkish news agency Anadolu reported that Pakistan and Qatar are working to arrange a new round of direct talks. Islamabad and Doha are both being considered as possible venues where America and Iran might eventually sit across from each other again. I find this part of the story important, and I do not think it gets enough credit. Pakistan helped broker something called the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, which brought about a ceasefire back in June. That agreement asked both sides to stop military action, keep the Strait of Hormuz open for trade, and begin serious talks on Iran’s nuclear program and American sanctions. Iranian parliamentary spokesman Hassan Gashghavi confirmed that mediating countries are now trying to breathe new life into that same agreement. Deputy Prime Minister and foreign minister Ishaq Dar spoke by phone with his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, on Monday. They discussed the broader situation in the region and the ongoing diplomatic efforts across the Middle East. Dar also invited Araghchi to visit Pakistan soon. I keep coming back to one question as I write this. How many more times will I have to write this same story? How many more announcements, denials, and quiet rescues will it take before something actually holds? I will be honest with you. I am tired of writing about tension. I am tired of watching one side hint at peace while the other side pulls back. I am tired of hearing familiar names promise a resolution that never quite arrives. But I still hold onto something, and I think you should too. I hope this is the last time I have to write this cycle. I hope the next headline is not about another denial or another delayed meeting. I hope it is about a real, lasting peace, the kind that does not need Pakistan or Qatar or anyone else to keep rescuing it.

Readers might have noticed my infatuation with the past. I often relate my childhood experience to a modern day issue. I often drag my school or university days when I write about today’s youth. I love my past, but sometimes what worries me the most is what if these memories disappear or fade gradually. As we age, our memory becomes weak and we start forgetting the past events. Occasionally, I struggle to remember the name of someone who I met a couple of weeks ago. I still have several friends who narrate a two decade old event with minute detail. I envy their brain health. Now I find this excellent blog on Minute Mirror site which says something that gave me real comfort. It said forgotten memories may not be gone at all. They may just be sleeping. Scientists studied fruit flies, of all creatures, and found something remarkable. When they placed these tiny flies back in an environment similar to where a memory first formed, that memory came alive again. It was not dead. It was only quiet, waiting for the right door to knock on. Now I am no scientist, friends. I am just a man who spends too much time looking backward. But when I read this, something in my chest loosened up a little. Because I always feared that my old memories were leaking out of me, drop by drop, the way water leaks from a cracked clay pot. I feared that one day I would wake up and my childhood street would be gone from my mind, my mother’s voice reading me stories would be gone, the smell of my school canteen would be gone. But this research tells a gentler story. It tells me that memory is not a candle that simply burns out. It is more like a lamp switched off in a room I stopped visiting. The lamp is still there. The bulb still works. I only need to walk back into that room, and somehow, the light comes on again. Think about it, friends. Have you ever caught a scent, maybe of rain falling on dry earth, and suddenly you are eight years old again, standing on your grandmother’s veranda? Have you ever heard an old song on the radio and felt your whole childhood come rushing back in one breath? That is not magic. That is your brain finding the right key for a door it had quietly locked. Of course, the article is honest enough to admit that scientists still do not fully understand everything. Sometimes the brain brings back memories that are not entirely true. It mixes things up. It adds a little color here, removes a little detail there. Human memory, unlike a fruit fly’s, is a complicated thing. But even with its flaws, I find this idea beautiful. Our memories are patient. They do not vanish just because we stop visiting them. They simply wait. I think of my old friends, the ones who can recall an event from twenty years ago as if it happened yesterday. I used to envy them, thinking their brains were simply built better than mine. Now I wonder if maybe they just keep walking back into those old rooms more often than I do. Maybe remembering is not only about a strong brain. Maybe it is about visiting. So here is what I plan to do, friends. I plan to walk old streets again. I plan to visit my old school gate, even if it now sells mobile phone covers instead of candy. I plan to play those old songs my father used to hum while shaving in the morning. I plan to open every quiet room in my mind, one by one, and let the light back in. Because somewhere in me, my mother is still calling me in for dinner. Somewhere in me, my school bell is still ringing. Somewhere in me, a boy is still running home before the streetlights come on. They are not gone. They were only sleeping. And tonight, God willing, I intend to wake every single one of them up.

The preceding parts of this series have gradually separated concepts that modern banking has merged. Money used for payments is not the same thing as investment capital. A current account is not economically identical to funds deliberately committed to enterprise. Commercial-bank money creation is not automatically riba, but neither should monetary privilege remain beyond scrutiny. Once these distinctions are accepted, an obvious question arises: how will productive activity actually be financed? No modern economy can function merely by condemning interest. Farmers require seasonal finance. Manufacturers need machinery and working capital. Exporters must bridge the period between production and receipt of foreign proceeds. Families need housing. Governments require infrastructure. Entrepreneurs need capital before their businesses begin earning revenue. A serious alternative to riba must finance all of these activities (see the model of Robobank). The answer is not to replace every conventional loan with musharakah. Nor is it to rename a predetermined financial return as “profit”. Islamic commercial jurisprudence developed several different contractual forms precisely because economic transactions differ. Sale, lease, partnership, advance purchase and manufacturing contracts perform different functions and allocate ownership and risk differently. The real task is to connect financial return with an identifiable economic basis. A useful starting principle is simple: money should not generate a guaranteed return merely because money has been advanced. Return should arise from trade, ownership, service, productive participation or genuine exposure to commercial risk. This does not mean that every legitimate return must fluctuate. A trader may sell an asset for a fixed profit. A landlord may agree a fixed rent. A contractor may charge a predetermined price. A manufacturer may agree in advance to produce goods for a specified consideration. The prohibition of riba does not abolish prices. What matters is what stands behind the price. State Bank of Pakistan itself explains murabaha as a sale rather than a loan: the seller acquires a commodity, discloses its cost and sells it at an agreed profit. SBP similarly recognises mudarabah, musharakah, ijarah, salam and istisna as distinct Islamic financing structures. Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) maintains separate Shariah standards for murabaha, ijarah, salam, istisna and musharakah precisely because each represents a different legal and commercial relationship. The distinction is fundamental. Consider machinery required by an industrial enterprise. A conventional bank may lend Rs.100 million and require repayment of principal plus interest. Under a genuine murabaha structure, the financier purchases identified machinery, assumes ownership during the relevant period and subsequently sells it to the customer at an agreed deferred price. The return is then legally attached to a sale. This difference has substance only if the financier actually acquires what it claims to sell. Ownership cannot be reduced to a momentary paper entry while every risk, liability and practical responsibility remains with the customer from beginning to end. The same principle applies to ijarah. A financier that purchases machinery, vehicles or other productive assets and leases them to a business may legitimately earn rent because it owns an asset whose use is being transferred. Ownership, however, carries obligations. Structural ownership risks cannot simply be transferred wholesale to the lessee while the financier retains only the right to receive money. The issue is thus not whether rent happens to resemble an interest payment in amount. Economic prices often converge. The decisive issue is whether a genuine lease exists. Housing illustrates the point particularly well. Diminishing musharakah has become one of the major financing techniques used in Islamic banking. Under its proper conception, the financier and customer acquire a property jointly. The customer pays rent for the financier’s share and progressively purchases units of that share until sole ownership is achieved. State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has long maintained specific Shariah standards governing Sharikat-ul-Milk and diminishing musharakah. This can provide a defensible alternative to an interest-bearing mortgage. Its legitimacy, however, depends upon genuine co-ownership. If the customer bears every cost and risk from the first day, if the bank’s capital is effectively guaranteed irrespective of what happens to the asset, and if the entire arrangement merely reproduces principal plus benchmarked return, the partnership becomes increasingly formal rather than substantive. The same scrutiny is required in agriculture. Agriculture is ill-suited to rigid debt repayment because its returns depend upon weather, crop disease, market prices, water availability and timing. A farmer may incur losses despite diligence and competence. Classical commercial law contains an instrument remarkably suited to this problem: salam. Under salam, the purchaser pays the price in advance for specified goods to be delivered later. The farmer obtains working capital before harvest. The purchaser acquires a commercial claim to the future crop and assumes the market risk associated with buying it in advance. This is not charity. It is trade. Properly developed agricultural salam markets could provide farmers with liquidity without forcing them into compounding debt when crops fail. Warehousing, quality certification, crop insurance or takaful, commodity exchanges and transparent market information would be necessary to make such financing scalable. Istisna can similarly serve manufacturing, construction and infrastructure. A textile mill, irrigation facility, industrial machine and housing project need not be forced into one universal debt contract. Partnership financing becomes important where future returns are uncertain. Musharakah permits parties to combine capital and share results. Mudarabah separates capital from enterprise: one party provides funds and another skill and management. Return is connected with actual economic performance. Their difficulty is equally obvious. Profit-and-loss sharing cannot work where accounts are unreliable, sales remain hidden, related-party transactions are opaque and litigation takes years. A financier unable to determine actual profit will naturally prefer a fixed receivable. Financial reform requires credible accounts, meaningful audit, digital documentation, effective insolvency laws, reliable registries and quick commercial adjudication. Risk sharing cannot flourish where information itself cannot be trusted. There is, however, another question we rarely ask: why must productive finance remain concentrated in a few large banks? History offers an instructive example. Rabobank did not begin as the international institution known today. Its origins were local Dutch farmers’