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Pakistan: In Interesting Times
The current pace and frequency of what would have been regarded as “watershed” events in Pakistani politics leaves one second-guessing what is likely to unfold in the immediate future. It has not been a year since the Baloch rebel chief Akbar Bugti was killed in a military operation. State security agencies do not kill former governors and chief ministers every day; if the Bugti episode feels like such a distant memory it is because Pakistanis and those around them are doomed to live in interesting times – at least for now.
The current pace and frequency of what would have been regarded as “watershed” events in Pakistani politics leaves one second-guessing what is likely to unfold in the immediate future. It has not been a year since the Baloch rebel chief Akbar Bugti was killed in a military operation. State security agencies do not kill former governors and chief ministers every day; if the Bugti episode feels like such a distant memory it is because Pakistanis and those around them are doomed to live in interesting times – at least for now.
The rhythm of unprecedented events has been mindnumbing since March 9 when Pervez Musharraf filed a reference against the chief justice of the Supreme Court, which was finally quashed on July 21. No government had ever filed a reference against a serving chief justice before. No government or political official had ever refused Musharraf’s invitation to resign in the seven years of his reign. There had not been a mass political event in central Punjab of the magnitude witnessed on the May 5 trip of the chief justice to Lahore since Benazir Bhutto’s welcome home party in 1986.
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