How "Failed" Is Pakistan?

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13 May 2009 04:38 pm

Manan Ahmed traces the history of the "Pakistan is a failed state" meme:

This decades-long tendency to reduce Pakistan’s complexity to either “failure” or “stability” reflects, above all, a glaring poverty of knowledge about the real lives of 175 million Pakistanis today. Since 2007 alone, they removed a dictator from military and civilian power without firing a single shot, held the first national election since 1997 – in which right-wing radical parties were soundly rejected – and launched a secular movement for justice.

None of this matters, we are told, because Pakistan is facing “an existential threat” from “violent extremists”, as a State Department spokesman said on Monday. US generals and media commentators are hinting that a military takeover may be the only way to arrest the imminent “failure” – to combat the “Talibanisation” of Pakistan and keep the dreaded nukes from “falling into the hands” of terrorist groups.
A comically exaggerated version of reality underpins such concerns.

Thoreau picked up on the cluelessness of the western media's portrayal of Pakistan a few days ago.

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