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blue bits. red rocks.
Saturday 29 December 2007

Pakistan was a reasonably stable state for four years after it came into existence in 1947, but then it fell victim to the ambitions of some of its civilian and military leaders and the machinations of the equally ambitious and arrogant Cold War warriors in Washington. If the BBC and CNN reporters had bothered to ask they would have found out that Benazir Bhutto was killed at the same place where Pakistan’s first, democratically chosen Prime Minister had been killed. The park’s name was changed from Nishtar Park to Liaquat Bagh in his honour. That mystery of that assassination was never resolved, but in just a few days the valiantly struggling democracy of Pakistan became a burgeoning playground for one military dictator after another, each leaning ever closer to Washington in exchange for ever increasing rewards. When the Pakistani army threw up a general who wanted to turn Pakistan into a Muslim theocracy, Washington’s affection did not decrease. Well, actually, it did diminish for a short while. But then the revolution in Iran kicked the Shah out, while the Russians went blundering in into Afghanistan. The Cold War warriors went into high gear, and embraced the kohl-eyed General Ziaul Haq as their hero, as a brother soldier in the great war against the Red Menace, just as they embraced Saddam Husain as fellow soldier in the great war against Khomeini’s Iran. Just pause for a moment to think. Someone in Washington decided to support Zia because he could use his mullahs to train fanatic jihadists to send into Afghanistan, while choosing at the same time a swaggering secular general to fight the mullahs in Iran. Wouldn’t we like to know what they were smoking? Wouldn’t we like to know what they were smoking more recently when they compelled Musharraf to have the court cases against her dropped, anointed her as the saviour of Democracy, and sent her to Pakistan? Naim Sahib

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