The trillion-dollar war machine

A man in Austria has jumped on to a high-speed train after apparently being left behind at a station stop. According to local media reports, the man, an Algerian aged 24, is reported to have decided to take advantage of a scheduled stop a St Poelten, 64km (60 miles) west of the capital Vienna, for…

An international crew of four astronauts returned home on Earth on Saturday after nearly five months aboard the International Space Station, returning safely in a SpaceX capsule.

The spacecraft carrying US astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan’s Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov splashed down off California’s coast at 8:44am local time (8:34pm PKT).

Their return marks the end of the 10th crew rotation mission to the space station under Nasa’s Commercial Crew Program, which was created to succeed the Space Shuttle era by partnering with private industry.

The Dragon capsule of billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX company detached from the International Space Station (ISS) at 2215 GMT (3:15am PKT) on Friday.

The capsule’s dizzying, 17-hour drop back down to Earth was slowed when it re-entered the atmosphere, then further reined in by the deployment of huge parachutes.

After the capsule splashed down, it was recovered by a SpaceX ship and hoisted aboard. Only then were the astronauts able to breathe Earth’s air again, for the first time in months.

The astronaut team, known as Crew-10, conducted numerous scientific experiments during their time on the space station, including studying plant growth and how cells react to gravity.

Their launch into space in March allowed two US astronauts to return home after being unexpectedly stuck on board the space station for nine months.

When they launched in June 2024, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were only supposed to spend eight days in space on a test of the Boeing Starliner’s first crewed flight.

However, the spaceship developed propulsion problems and was deemed unfit to fly back, leaving them stranded in space.

Nasa announced this week that Wilmore has decided to retire after 25 years of service at the US space agency.

Last week, US astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov boarded the ISS for a six-month mission.

Apparently, the long winning streak of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in Sindh is not due to the party’s popularity in the province, but because there is no other force effective enough to challenge the party’s electoral hold here. But Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) “is still very popular.” 

This is what most political analysts — especially from Punjab and those stationed in Sindh’s multi-ethnic capital Karachi — often posit. I’ll try to address both the perceptions. 

First of all, I find their view (regarding Sindh) rather imbecilic. For every election since 2008, multiple alliances of strange bedfellows have formed in the province to become that ‘effective electoral force’, but none of them have been able to break the PPP’s spell in the province. Why? 

The fact is, popularity alone is never enough to guarantee long winning streaks in elections. Functionality is more important. The PPP is now one of the most functional parties in Sindh, which attracts both the popular vote as well as the pragmatic vote. But, of course, then comes that rhetorical question about Karachi. Why is it so ‘mismanaged’ and ‘ignored’? 

There is no doubt that Karachi faces some major issues. But to suggest that this is so because the PPP does not have a large enough vote-bank in the city is now an outdated view. Karachi’s issues aren’t recent. The roots of its many social, political and economic problems actually lie in the 1980s.

The PPP’s hold over Sindh, despite what some may argue, isn’t because of weak opposition — it is the result of electoral functionality. So why is media analysis often based on perceptions without evidence?

Due to waves of migrations from other provinces of the country (and from Afghanistan) in the 1980s, Karachi’s population began to balloon. This put the city’s resources under tremendous pressure, triggering vicious ethnic violence and corruption.

From 1977 till 1988, Sindh was governed by Gen Ziaul Haq’s military dictatorship, and then by pro-Zia parties. The 1980s’ ethnic violence in Karachi and the rollback of the city’s economy crossed into the 1990s. For the next decade — from 1988 till 1999 — Sindh was governed twice by the PPP and twice by coalitions of anti-PPP outfits. 

Karachi eventually fell into the hands of the Mohajir (later Muttahida) Qaumi Movement (MQM). MQM had enough votes and street power to stall any economic manoeuvres planned for the city, if these were seen by the party as not being in its interest. Also, by the 1990s, cities such as Lahore in Punjab began to compete with Karachi in terms of industrial output, largely due to the security challenges in Karachi.

From 2002 till 2008, Sindh was in the hands of a military regime (Gen Pervez Musharraf) supported by a coalition of pro-Musharraf parties. Apparently, Karachi during this period was ‘getting back on its feet again.’ This was hogwash, really. On May 12, 2007, this farcical perception cracked and many tensions of the past that never went away came screaming to the surface again.

Fifty-eight people died in a single day of violence between ethnic groups, armed gangs, political parties and the security forces. What’s more, the city began to also see the influx of militant Islamists from the northern parts of the country, looking to get their share of the pie in Karachi’s notorious ‘underworld’ universe, which also never went away. 

It is true that, in 2008, when the PPP finally returned to power in Sindh, it was slow to address the city’s many issues, focusing more on the rest of the province. But it is also true that, after 2018, the party began giving the city more attention — especially after MQM broke into factions and the ‘popularity’ of PTI in the city started to erode because it had no clue how to do ‘constituency politics.’ Constituency politics is a vital function in Karachi’s many multi-ethnic constituencies. 

Mammoth cities such as Karachi have mammoth problems. But it would be naive (and maybe even somewhat dishonest) to suggest that the PPP ‘is doing nothing for the city.’ In the last few years, it has been quite active in initiating various developmental projects here, especially after it won the city’s mayorship in 2023.

Now, something about the PTI’s ‘popularity’ that one is constantly reminded of by analysts and vloggers. Those on PTI’s side doing this, is understandable. But more interesting is the way the so-called ‘neutral’ and even anti-PTI analysts and vloggers do it. 

For example, often at the end of a critical tirade against the PTI, one can actually predict that the tirade will end with these words: “Behar haal, iss mein koi shak nahin, PTI aik bohat maqbool jamaat hai [Anyway, there is no doubt that PTI is a very popular party].” I always find this amusing. It is as if, during their tirade, the analysts/vloggers begin to feel guilty. Of what, though? 

Indeed, the PTI did well during the February 2024 elections (under trying circumstances). It received 31.17 percent of the total vote. But this also means over 65 percent of the votes were cast for other parties. Nevertheless, things have moved in such a manner in the last one year that there is every likelihood that PTI’s vote-bank may have lost its shape a bit. 

PTI was always more of a movement than a functional party. And, today, it is not even a functional movement. Also, there has been no recent survey to ‘scientifically’ gauge its ‘popularity’. February 2024 now looks far away in the past. 

It is also possible that the perception of PTI’s ‘continuous popularity’ is the result of ‘feedback loops.’

A 2013 study in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology and a 2023 study in the journal Party Politics describe this as an intense focus on a political figure or movement that can create a feedback loop where media coverage, academic analysis and political discourse all contribute to a heightened sense of the importance of the political figures and movements. This can lead to an over-simplistic and homogenised picture of a political trend. 

Imran Khan and his PTI are in shambles today. But the thing that is keeping them afloat is a ‘popularity’ constructed by feedback loops, in which even those who oppose PTI have become stuck. In the current reality, the party’s electoral pull might actually be loosening.

Anyway, so, should I too end this column with, ‘Behar haal, iss mein koi shak nahin, PTI aik bohat maqbool jamaat hai’?

Published in Dawn, EOS, August 10th, 2025

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