Saturday, May 7, 2011

Pakistan Government More Dysfunctional Than A-Merry-Ca?

[...Bin Laden is dead and reasonable people everywhere have overcome the initial euphoria to conclude that while symbolic, his death does not mark any major milestone in the effort to defang the global Islamist terror enterprise. So the most pertinent questions have hardly much to do with bin Laden at all. The big questions are around the country he was found in, and what role this country has played, does play, and will play in fixing itself and fulfilling its international obligations.

...The single-lens view of Pakistan through the prism of terrorism often ignores the substantial body of evidence that suggests that dysfunction in Pakistan is deep, wide and systemic. Pakistan has an education emergency so severe, that it keeps nearly 40 million kids between five and 18 out of school. That is among the world’s largest out-of-school populations. Most cities in the country experience more than six hours of electricity load-shedding. Industry is in disrepair. The police don’t have bulletproof vests, or in many cases even guns. And the justice system will more readily sentence a Christian woman to death for blasphemy than it will sentence a gang of rapists to death for gang-rape. The fissures and cracks in the Pakistani state’s ability to function are deep and wide. This, incredibly, might be the good news.]
http://openthemagazine.com/article/international/besieged-not-fallen

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