On the screen, horrific images of World War II flicker, showing the skeletal figures of Jewish men, women and children in Nazi concentration camps being marched into the horrors of the “Final Solution.”

It is a sombre cinematic and television ritual we have come to expect. Yet, if one observes the scheduling of these screened tragedies, a pattern emerges.

Whenever the state of Israel faces widespread condemnation for its brutal excursions in the Middle East, the Western entertainment industry develops a sudden, renewed obsession with Jewish victimhood during the last world war.

This is what media scholars call “affective management”, a term describing how our emotional responses are curated by those who control the narrative. In 1988, academics Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky examined this as an attempt to mitigate the public relations (PR) disaster of the present with the trauma of the past.

By re-running the tragedy faced by the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis, the Western entertainment industry provides a moral counterweight that often dilutes contemporary criticism of Israeli state violence. The criticism becomes ‘antisemitism’.

In the 1970s and 1980s, as Israel’s image gradually mutated from the ‘underdog’ of 1948 to a regional leviathan, especially following its 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Western airwaves were hit with a wave of Holocaust dramas. The 1978 NBC miniseries Holocaust did not just win Emmys. It reached hundreds of millions of viewers precisely as the international community began to grapple with Israel’s diplomatic isolation at the United Nations (UN).

From acclaimed Holocaust dramas to nationalist blockbusters, the strategic revival of past trauma can influence public perception, shifting attention from present-day violence to the moral weight of historical suffering

When the First Intifada broke out in the occupied territories of Palestine in the late 1980s, during which young Palestinians fought Israeli troops with slingshots, the American broadcasting network ABC responded with the expensive multi-part epic War and Remembrance.

As the world watched nightly news footage of Israeli soldiers using violent tactics against Palestinian stone-throwers, War and Remembrance provided an emotional diversion. It ensured that the image of the Jew as the eternal victim remained the dominant cultural framework, even as the Israeli state was acting as the primary aggressor.

In 1997, media scholar Yosefa Loshitzky noted that the “sacralisation of the Holocaust” provides a moral shield, creating a binary where the memory of a past genocide is used to silence discourse on Israel’s contemporary human rights violations.

Films such as The Zone of Interest (2023), which depicts a troubled German commandant of a concentration camp during World War II, do not simply appear by chance. They are launched with massive fanfare at film festivals, precisely when discourse on apartheid or genocide in the Middle East reaches a boiling point.

In the age of Netflix and streaming, this reflex has become even more frequent. During the recent ‘Gaza War’, in which Israeli forces killed tens — if not hundreds — of thousands of Palestinian men, women and children, and during Israel’s recent attacks on Lebanon and Iran, streaming platforms seemed to have gone into overdrive.

Suddenly, films such as Schindler’s List (1993) and The Pianist (2002), meditations on the horrors of the Holocaust, were pushed to the top of ‘recommended’ lists, while old and new documentaries on World War II appeared to tell the same story repeatedly.

This is what the American literature professor Michael Rothberg, in his book Multidirectional Memory, identifies as “screen memory.” The term describes a historical trauma brought forward specifically to obscure a problematic contemporary reality. Viewers become so preoccupied weeping for the victims of the 1940s that they find themselves with very little emotional bandwidth left for the families currently being pulled from the rubble in Gaza and Iran.

However, this is not exclusively a Western speciality. Bollywood has also mastered this art of cultural deflection. Whenever the Modi government in India faces international heat over its increasingly exclusionary treatment of minorities, the Mumbai dream factory starts to churn out ‘epics’ about internal enemies whose ancestors supposedly sought to destroy Hinduism.

This is the Indian version of “competitive victimhood”, or the act of shouting about the past sufferings of the ‘self’ so loudly that the current suffering of ‘the other’ becomes mere background noise.

For example, 2020’s Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior reimagined India’s historical Muslim rulers as monstrous invaders while elevating Hindu warriors as the ultimate defenders of Hinduism. Similarly, films such as The Kashmir Files (2022) or Article 370 (2024) framed the Indian state’s military presence in Kashmir not as an occupation but as a moral necessity, to prevent a return of past tragedies that befell Hindus.

In this narrative, the ‘other’ (largely Muslim) is cast as the eternal aggressor. This shift has been described by the US-based academic Nilanjana Bhattacharjya as the “new Bollywood”, where the screen memory of past conflicts is used to displace the immediate reality of contemporary state-led violence.

This trend went into overdrive after the Indian air force suffered major losses against Pakistan in May 2025. This time, instead of resurfacing a past trauma, a past victory from the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war was brought forward to displace the reality of a recent defeat. This year’s Border 2 is an example.

The Turks, under the banner of ‘Neo-Ottomanism’, have followed a similar script. While Ankara’s regional ambitions draw Western criticism, Turkish television has been dominated by historical fantasies such as Dirili: Erturul. Such shows re-imagine the Ottoman past as a period of heroic resistance against the West and internal traitors. As the Germany-based transcultural studies scholar Josh Carney points out, these dramas function as a “moral reset” for the modern state, priming the audience to view Turkiye as a beleaguered fortress defending its sacred heritage.

The early 20th century Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci wrote that dominant groups shape “cultural common sense”, making their version of history the absolute moral benchmark. When the Western entertainment industry consistently rewinds material on the violence against Jews, it establishes a framework where the security of the Jewish state is an ethical necessity that transcends international law.

By flooding the public sphere with historical trauma, the industry effectively moves the focus from the present to the past. The result is a self-reinforcing loop, where the market for historical tragedy becomes most active exactly when that tragedy serves a political purpose.

Across the board, from Hollywood to Mumbai, the industry’s reflex turns complex contemporary human rights issues into a binary struggle of survivors versus villains. It is a potent form of cultural hegemony, ensuring that the ghosts of the past remain more real to us than the dying children of the present.

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 29th, 2026

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When Shah Abbas I ascended the throne of the Safavid Empire in 1588, the political geography of Western and South Asia was undergoing a profound transformation. Sixteenth-century colonial expansionism was one of several realignments in the region, and maritime trade through the Arabian Sea was fast gaining new importance.

For more than a century, the Portuguese Empire exercised formidable control over this coastline. In 1515, they captured Hormuz from Shah Ismail I, and their hold stretched all the way to their colonial capital at Goa, which they had seized in 1510.

Through Vasco da Gama’s voyage at the close of the 15th century, the Portuguese had reached the Indian Ocean via the Cape of Good Hope. By the 1600s, however, this dominance was beginning to weaken. New European rivals, such as the East India Company (EIC), were entering Asian waters, determined to claim a share of the lucrative trade.

The turning point came in 1612, when English ships defeated a Portuguese fleet in the Battle of Swally, fought off the coast of Gujarat. The Mughal emperor Jahangir, impressed by this naval victory, soon granted the EIC permission to establish a trading factory at Surat in 1613. Later, a British-Safavid operation regained control of Hormuz in 1622. These encounters significantly altered the balance of power in the region.

In 1613, the East India Company established its first major trading base in the Arabian Sea at Surat in Indian Gujarat. Another contender was Gwadar…

Decades prior, the Portuguese had already lost favour across the Makran coast with Baloch groups. In Asia Portuguesa, the Portuguese historian Manuel de Faria e Sousa writes that Gwadar was destroyed in 1581, along with Pasni.

Almost coincidental then, that our protagonist, Robert Sherley, was born that same year.

The Brothers Sherley

Born in Sussex, Sherley belonged to a family of English gentry whose fortunes had declined. At the end of the 16th century, he travelled east with his elder brother Anthony, arriving at the court of Shah Abbas in Isfahan.

Their arrival in Persia would prove transformative. The Sherley brothers presented themselves as useful intermediaries between the Safavids and Europe, and Shah Abbas found their services valuable. Robert was kept by the Shah to take part in the Safavid-Ottoman Wars and later became an envoy of the Shah.

Over the following years, the younger Sherley travelled widely across Europe, representing Safavid interests before various courts. Dressed in Persian robes and presenting himself as the Shah’s ambassador, he became a fascinating diplomatic figure of the age. An Englishman stood serving a Persian monarch while negotiating with European rulers.

The Expedition

It was during one of his journeys to Persia that Robert found himself aboard the English ship, Expedition, in 1613. The vessel sailed under the command of Christopher Newport, bound for the Indian Ocean.

The ship reached the Makran coast and anchored off Gwadar on September 17, 1613. After its destruction, the port was on the margins of both the Mughals who had conquered Sindh, and the Safavids. Nazerbeg, a Persian accompanying Sherley, went on land and brought back a message that, while Makran was not formally under the authority of Shah Abbas, he would be welcomed and provided with safe passage inland.

The offer was appealing. Preparations began for the overland journey towards Isfahan. Sherley’s baggage and gifts were sent ashore, while arrangements were made for the caravan that would escort him. According to Walter Payton, as reproduced in Purchas’ Pilgrims — a nearly fantastical 17th century travel collection by Englishmen and others, which merit the need to vet multiple sources — things did not go exactly as planned.

By chance, a sailor aboard the Expedition overheard a conversation, in which Payton writes “…they had consulted and concluded upon the Massacre of us all.” Instead of escorting Sherley safely across Makran, they intended to lure members of the ship ashore, kill them and seize their property.

The discovery forced a rapid change of plans. Several locals who had boarded the ship were detained as hostages until Sherley’s goods were returned. Only after his possessions had been safely recovered did the Expedition raise anchor and depart Gwadar, now sailing towards Sindh.

Sherley’s reaction to the encounter, however, was somewhat unexpected.

A Factory that Never Was

Despite a narrow escape, Robert lay convinced that Gwadar possessed considerable commercial potential. According to British anthropologist Brian Spooner, Sherley wrote to the EIC, suggesting that the port could serve as a base for English trade with Persia.

Its location offered several advantages, wrote Sherley. It provided autonomy, close passage to the Safavids and “the richest traffic in the world.” From such a base, Sherley argued, English merchants could develop profitable commerce in Persian silk and other goods.

According to US-based historian Daniel Razzari, it was partly at his insistence that the British helped the Safavid’s recapture Hormuz. Therefore, instead of Surat as the site of the first English factory, it could have very nearly been at Gwadar. However, Persia was seen as a trading backwater and an Ottoman-Safavid truce reduced the need for maritime trade. The EIC’s attention was also already fixed on the opportunities presented by Mughal India.

Moreover, Sherley himself had become a somewhat ambiguous figure for the EIC. England had become Protestant, yet Robert cultivated close relationships with Catholic Europe during his diplomatic missions, promising them access to Persia if the British refused. Company officials, such as Thomas Roe, were wary of allowing an independent adventurer to shape their commercial strategy, particularly since the EIC held exclusive shipping rights for the English court in the Indian Ocean.

The proposal faded from consideration.

Gwadar Onwards

Gwadar’s later history followed a more regional path. The port remained a modest settlement along the Makran coast for much of the early modern period. In the late 18th century, it briefly assumed greater importance when the Khan of Kalat, Mir Nasir Khan I Ahmedzai, gave refuge to Sultan bin Ahmad Al Busaidi, who had fled a power struggle in Oman.

Mir Nasir Khan’s initial intentions were to help Sultan take over Oman, but then later offered him refuge at Gwadar, to rule as a fiefdom. Sultan then used the port as a base to regain his throne in Muscat, linking Gwadar to the political fortunes of the Omani dynasty. He kept Gwadar and, under Omani patronage, Gwadar and Chahbahar outstripped similar ports such as Jiwani and Pasni.

Meanwhile, Sultan was in no hurry to return it to the Khan of Kalat, who by now had to resist insurrections from feudatory states, later on spurred by the British Raj. Omani hold over the Makran developed further.

In the long narrative of imperial expansion in the Indian Ocean, the episode of Robert Sherley’s visit to Gwadar might appear little more than a historical curiosity, yet it offers a small reminder of how contingent such histories can be. The establishment of the EIC at Surat in 1613 can be seen as an inevitable development. Sherley’s brief encounter with Gwadar suggests otherwise. The possibility remains an intriguing footnote to the early encounters between Europe and the shores of the Arabian Sea.

From being the very first territories that could have fallen into British hands, Balochistan ended up amongst the very last, under Robert Sandeman and the creation of the Balochistan Agency in 1871. When Prince Karim Aga Khan IV funded the purchase of Gwadar in 1958, it also became amongst the last territories to be brought into Pakistan.

The writer is Managing Editor, Folio Books

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 29th, 2026

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Max Verstappen, four times world champion and the defining driver of the last era, says the new cars do not feel like Formula 1 anymore. Lando Norris, who ended that era by beating him to the 2025 title, says they are a lot of fun.

Both of them are probably right, and that tension tells you everything you need to know about what Formula 1 has done to itself for 2026.

This is not a routine regulation tweak. The sport has overhauled its engines, rewritten how aerodynamics work, replaced its overtaking system and switched to entirely sustainable fuel.

It is the kind of change that creates new champions and ends dynasties, and the paddock knows it.

THE ENGINE AT THE HEART OF IT ALL

Every major shift in Formula 1 starts with the engine, and 2026 is no different. The cars are still powered by 1.6 litre V6 hybrids, but the architecture of how that power is produced has been torn apart and rebuilt.

The previous generation used two systems to recover energy and feed it back into the battery. The Motor Generator Unit-Kinetic (MGU-K) harvested energy from braking, while the Motor Generator Unit-Heat (MGU-H) pulled heat energy from exhaust gases passing through the turbo-charger. Together they accounted for around 20 percent of the car’s total power, maxing out at 120 kilowatts.

The sport has changed the architecture of its engines, forced drivers to rethink aerodynamics and strategy, and switched to entirely sustainable fuel — what will this transformation mean for the 2026 season?

The MGU-H is gone. It was brutally expensive, relevant to almost no road car technology, and arguably the single biggest barrier to new manufacturers entering the sport. In its place, the MGU-K has been transformed, with its electrical output nearly tripling to 350 kilowatts and producing a power split of roughly 50/50 between the combustion engine and the hybrid system. That is not a refinement of what came before. It is a different philosophy entirely.

DRIVING AS A MENTAL SPORT

The 2026 cars will be slower overall. Reduced downforce means lower cornering speeds. But slower through corners does not mean slower everywhere. The extra electrical power makes these cars explosive out of corners and rapid on the straights, where the battery boost has the most impact.

What changes most profoundly is what happens inside the cockpit. The 2022 to 2025 era rewarded drivers who could feel the limits of aerodynamic grip and commit to corners at terrifying speeds. The 2026 era will reward drivers who can think like chess players, managing a battery that is simultaneously their greatest weapon and their most precious resource.

The Drag Reduction System (DRS), which is the default overtaking mechanism since 2011, has been retired. Its replacement is a two mode system. Overtake mode delivers a surge of battery power when a driver is within one second of the car ahead. Boost mode can be deployed anywhere on the lap for maximum electrical output, useful for both attacking and defending.

The catch is that every burst of power drains the battery, and recovering that charge requires real discipline. Super-clipping, where the engine is intentionally dialled back at the end of straights to collect energy rather than hold top speed, will become a standard tool. The fastest way around a lap in 2026 will not be to use maximum power at every opportunity. It will be to know precisely when not to.

FUEL, CLIMATE AND A BROADER AMBITION

2026 also marks Formula 1’s full switch to 100 percent sustainable fuel, up from the 10 percent renewable ethanol blend introduced in 2022, in line with the sport’s goal of reaching net zero carbon by 2030.

It has not been straightforward. Ben Hodkinson, Technical Director of Red Bull Ford Powertrains, has spoken about the challenges posed by sustainable fuels, whose chemical elements have varying evaporation points and must ignite at higher temperatures than conventional fuel.

The longer ambition is that technology developed under the extreme demands of Formula 1 can eventually find relevance beyond the racetrack, contributing to a broader shift in how the world powers its engines.

THE WORKS TEAMS ADVANTAGE

The tighter relationship between engine and aerodynamics in 2026 creates a structural advantage for teams that build their own power units.

Active aerodynamic flaps on the front and rear wings open automatically on straights to shed drag, then close again for corners to restore downforce, working in close coordination with the hybrid deployment strategy.

Works teams such as Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull design their cars knowing every dimension of their own engine, allowing them to package everything without compromise. Customer teams buying their engines from someone else are working with hardware designed for a different car, and those constraints can quietly bleed away performance in ways that are hard to recover.

WILL HISTORY REPEAT ITSELF?

The last time Formula 1 rewrote the engine regulations was 2014, and one team simply got it more right than everyone else. Mercedes arrived with an MGU-H so superior to the competition that it underpinned eight consecutive constructors’ championships. The fear is always that a regulation reset hands one team a headstart the rest of the field spends years trying to close.

There are structural reasons to think 2026 will be different. This is the first major engine overhaul under Formula 1’s cost cap, which limits how aggressively teams can spend to develop or recover performance.

The regulations also require works teams to supply their customers with the same engine specification, which was not the case 11 years ago. That said, the hunt for edges never stops. Mercedes has reportedly found a loophole in the engine compression ratio rules that rivals believe could translate into a meaningful power gain.

Whether that unravels or holds, it is a reminder that parity in Formula 1 is always a negotiation.

WHAT THIS MEANS FROM HERE

For the last four seasons, Formula 1 was a story about aerodynamics. Teams that mastered the air, dominated. That chapter is closing. The 2026 era will be written by whoever masters the energy, the engine and the fine line between using power and preserving it.

The skills that made someone the fastest driver of the last era may not be the same skills that make someone the fastest driver of this one. That uncertainty is what makes 2026 one of the most genuinely open seasons in a long time.

CLOSER TO HOME THAN YOU THINK

For Pakistan, the thread worth pulling on is the fuel story. Pakistan is among the countries most acutely exposed to climate change, from the catastrophic floods of recent years to prolonged heat events that have tested cities and agricultural systems alike. All of this despite contributing a fraction of the emissions that drive it.

The sight of one of the world’s most fuel-intensive sports committing fully to sustainable energy is, at minimum, a symbolic moment worth noting.

But there is a more practical dimension too. Interest in electric vehicles is clearly building in Pakistan, both in the bike and car segments, even as the infrastructure to support that transition remains thin. The innovation being stress-tested on circuits this season is aimed squarely at the gap between where energy technology is today and where it needs to go.

That is not just a Formula 1 problem. It is ours too.

The writer is a marketing and communications professional. X: @adaffan

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 29th, 2026

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