"The Independent" -- American drones overhead, Taliban troops on the offensive, and the horrifying rise of child kidnapping – Pakistan is in pieces, writes Robert Fisk, in a devastating portrait of a country thwarted by violence and corruption.
Every major city – Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta – is close to the borders of India or Afghanistan. It is a both sump of poverty and a nuclear power, an intelligent nation – its people desire education with the same craving as the Palestinians – with a history that began and ended at the moment of partition, its datelines framed by military coups and imperial hand-outs and, now, by drone attacks and suicide bombers. The latter arrived with a peculiar shock in Pakistan. They started in Lebanon, moved to 'Palestine', then to Iraq and then to Afghanistan – and then to Pakistan. From the Mediterranean to the old Raj, this black-magic rite travelled with incredible speed. And now it has merged with the dirt and corruption and nuclear power of Pakistan.
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