PROBLEM? IT'S THE SOLUTION:

Are Midnight's Children heading for partition again?: At 60, India prospers while Pakistan bleeds, and the Taliban is rubbing salt into the wounds (Dilip Hiro, 12 August 2007, Independent)

Despite floods in some areas of their county, the mood of Indians, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of India's independence from Britain on 15 August, remains bullish. The economy is robust, and the secular democratic system, tempered by 14 orderly parliamentary elections, vibrant, with civilian control over the military remaining inviolate.

By contrast, in Pakistan the celebration of the diamond jubilee of independence a day earlier will be muted as its military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, ponders his next move. Caught between the challenge of radical Islamists on one side and secular, democratic opposition on the other, he finds his area of manoeuvre diminishing, with his political base, the Pakistan Muslim League-Qaid-e-azam (PML-Q), disintegrating fast.

Musharraf has decided, for now, not to declare a state of emergency. That option remains very much on the table, although it would at best buy him time, not popularity. The basic problem for the region and the world at large is that his policies have brought Pakistan to the point where the Talibanisation of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Baluchistan has advanced so far that even a popularly elected civilian government, if and when it materialises, will find it hard to reverse the process. [...]

The danger is that the simmering Pashtun irredentism in these countries will gather momentum and strive to establish an Islamist Pashtunistan of 40 million people, resulting in the break-up of both Pakistan and Afghanistan.