THE POISON OF PAKISTAN Jinnah's gift to the world

Last month saw explosions in Mumbai, one of the most vibrant and cosmopolitan cities in India. As reported in the Guardian, ‘The coordinated rush-hour explosions, which killed at least 21 and wounded more than 100, were smaller and less sophisticated than the meticulously planned strike on Mumbai in November 2008. During that three-day rampage by the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, ten gunmen targeted westerners and Jews, killed 166 people and left India and Pakistan on the brink of war. Testimony at a recent trial in Chicago revealed that officers of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) helped Lashkar fund and plan that maritime assault on Mumbai. Commando-style raids are Lashkar's signature.’*
Pakistan is a country where journalists are routinely murdered, either by agents of the state, like Syed Saleem Shahzad almost certainly killed by the same Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), or by the Pakistani Taliban or other Islamacist groups. In which university campuses are being assaulted by militants with all the gentle methods of persuasion of the brownshirts. ‘After philosophy students and faculty members rallied to denounce heavy-handed efforts to separate male and female students, Islamists on campus struck back: In the dead of night, witnesses say, the radicals showed up at a men's dormitory armed with wooden sticks and bicycle chains.’**

In northern Pakistan centred on the city of Peshawar there is a lawless region in which the Taliban, both Afghan and Pakistani and the remnants of Al Quada rule with the connivance of the ISI and other significant elements in the countries ruling elite.

Let’ be clear this a country with nuclear weapons, eaten away by a hatred of its neighbour India. The terms ‘failed state’ and ‘rouge state’ have entered the lexicon both I would argue apply to Pakistan, a country that continues to pour its poison over its borders. Whilst we are rightly occupied by the current parlous state of international capitalism, the question of what to do about Pakistan may turn out to be rather more serious in the long term.

*Guardian 14/07/11

** July 22, 2011
By Alex Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times



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