Good article, an example of what we need (in many other spheres as well), less hagiography, more history.
Amerika's even more than usually ignorant interference was intended to leave Musharraf in place to handle the Army & ISI (no chance of the latter), Sharif to handle the bribes and routine administration and Benazir to be the 'acceptable (to the West)face of corruption'.
When Shrub first ran in 2000 it was thought that he'd been slightly/relatively isolationist for which I hoped, "If only!".
Anyone thinking that Krudd will be less of a poodle than Howard is dreaming - Latham called him (and others) 'the Americans'.
Plus ca change - who ever one votes for, the Government still gets in.

Happy New Year to all the racists.

Very sad to see the season of goodwill hasn't stopped you from your miserly expressions of hate.

Your lectures on evil are as anti-christ as any of the violence perpretrated by individuals in the name of Islam.

But I don't at all wonder why racist and dysfunctional Israel has been bought into this sorry Pakistani affair. After all the similarities are more striking than any differences. The Israeli Army and it's former members, now the political elite, control the hate, murder and repression in debacle in Palestine.

A grand example of the kettle calling the pot evil.

To all you Israeli fundamentalists this article would be a tad worrying.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/world/middleeast/31israel.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

And it's printed in the New York Times too. I'd wish you all a happy New Year but yours, like the Communist Chinese, hasn't begun yet, has it?

Keith

You demonstrate the frequent and absurd inability of so many to differentiate race from religion. I haven't read any racist posts here, just ones correctly pointing out the ever-presence of violence and turmoil in Pakistan and plausible linkages to the religion upon which it was founded.

I suppose it is just easier to throw the label than to engage in constructive dialogue as to why so many find Islam the most loathsome of the monotheisms, in our times at least. Certainly the histories of the other two are littered with manifold crimes, but unlike Islam, they have been brought to heel (to a large degree) by The Enlightenment and engagement with the reality of the unstoppable force that is secular humanism.

If you then prefer to equate the murderous rampages witnessed in Pakistan (post the murderous Al-Qaeda Islamic extremist assassination) with culture rather than religion, you will be left with the equally certain proposition that religion and culture are indivisible, in a nation that only exists due to Islam. An unpalatable proposition indeed,for a cultural relativist- albeit inescapable.

One murder closer to a nuclear nightmare

I hope the Americans really do have contingency plans to seize Pakistan's nukes and nuclear materials.

See:

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/world/One-murder-closer-to-a.3628315.jp

With Musharraf's grip on power and security weakening, there is a twin concern for the future: that the country's potential as a breeding ground for terrorism could increase exponentially, and that Pakistan's arsenal of nuclear weapons could fall into the wrong hands.

M J Gohel, the head of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a London-based security and intelligence think-tank, believes there is a strong possibility that parts of Pakistan's nuclear technology could fall into the grip of militants.

"It's a very, very valid risk," he said. "It's only a matter of time before al-Qaeda or somebody sympathetic to them gets hold of nuclear weapons, and if al-Qaeda or its sympathisers are to get hold of them, then Pakistan is at this point the weakest link in the chain."

In early 2005, a joint security assessment by the CIA and the US National Intelligence Council predicted Pakistan could become "a failed state, ripe with civil war, bloodshed, inter-provincial rivalries and a struggle for control of its nuclear weapons and complete Talibanisation" by 2015.

This weekend the Pentagon, which publicly insists the nuclear warheads are safe at present, is working on contingency plans to 'secure' the weapons if the situation in Pakistan deteriorates. They involve US special forces working with the Pakistani military to spirit the warheads away if they are at imminent risk of falling into the 'wrong' hands.

Experts say a more likely threat is that nuclear material, such as small quantities of radioactive uranium, would be passed on, allowing militant groups to develop so-called "dirty bombs".

Pakistan's culture of violence is driven by instability which in turn is driven by poor governance over the years and international incidents. The author is right to criticise the west for it's poor understanding of the country's need.

Is Musharaf such a bad dictator. In fact he has been quite benign to most of the population and reduced tensions with India in the face of a provocative government (BJP alliance). I believe he actually dislikes the term dictator. The country needs a dictator who has the best interests of the country at heart. (General) Musharaf knows that the country's way out is through economic progress, increased wealth and education to a high proportion of the population and how to transfer power from a dictatorship to a people ready for it. The west's only advice to him has been about going back to democracy. This is certain to only bring chaos to the country. Surely they would have known that Bhutto's Assassination was a 99% certainty.

Saleem Khan: “…to rethink the real issue of a stable and democratic Pakistan. The need to make these necessary evolutionary changes is ever more urgent.”

Pakistan came into being because Indian Muslims wanted to practice the Islamic ideal; to build a kingdom of Allah on earth. In the words of its spiritual father Muhammad Iqbal,

“Islam does not bifurcate the unity of man into an irreconcilable duality of spirit and matter. In Islam, God and the Universe, spirit and matter, church and state are organic to each other. For such a group of people, the concept of an Indian nationhood and the construction of a polity on national lines amounted to a negation of the Islamic principles of solidarity and, therefore, not acceptable to Muslims.”

With Pakistan’s founding, millions of Hindus were killed in both Pakistan and former East Pakistan (Bangladesh). Non-Muslims have been persecuted and chased away from these countries. A religion founded and propagated through violence will never know peace. Consequently, a country founded along the Islamic ethos of non-tolerance, coercion, violence would not, and cannot, find peace.

What Pakistan needs is not evolutionary changes but a revolution to demythologize Islam that it is a viable religious-political ideology. Islam belongs to the stone-age where the law of the jungle reigns supreme.

ps. In 1998, the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif presented to the Pakistan Parliament to make the Quran and Sunnah the supreme law of Pakistan.