Logo

Synopsis Some notable features of the quick-sands called Pakistan are: inability, even after half a century of its existence, to come to a clear conclusion about its own identity; open contempt for institutions of governance by the armed forces; intimidation of the judiciary; economic collapse; survival of the state on drug money; export of terrorism across the borders; grim ethnic divide; public disdain for state authority; lack of leadership, vision and strategy. Evidence is emerging of the close links of the ruling elite of Pakistan, including its Prime Minister, with the drug runners. Pakistanis in the know themselves assert that the country's nuclear programme is financed with the drug money. As the country goes under, overwhelmed by its economic, sectarian, ethnic and moral crisis, the resort to drug money will increase still further. When US cruise missiles overflew more than 1,000 kilometres of Pakistan airspace to attack terrorist camps in Afghanistan, Pakistan had to accept it with just a whimper of protest. Most explosive, perhaps, is the detailed exposure of Pakistan's terrorist activity in the Jammu and Kashmir state of the Indian Union, identifying locations, Pakistani officials involved, and the nature of their subversive enterprise. The malaise of such a state may, finally, end up in a second break-up of Pakistan, resulting in the formation of a separate Pakhtunkhwa, merged with the Pashtun region of Afghanistan. More worrisome for India, perhaps, are the hordes of directionless youth, being trained in the mushrooming madrasas in Pakistan, to carry their antiquated mission of converting the rest of the world to their version of Islam.