Something is rotten8230;

In Pakistan, every institution that makes for a modern democratic state has been systematically targeted, undermined and eventually destr...

In Pakistan, every institution that makes for a modern democratic state has been systematically targeted, undermined and eventually destroyed. The judiciary, such as it is, has learnt its lessons well, having suffered the wrath of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his henchmen in 1997.

Today it can quietly sentence, in absentia, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto to a five-year jail term, and maintain a discreet silence about The Friday Times editor Najam Sethi8217;s rights to walk as a free man. Any opposition that an active Press could have posed to the present political and military dispensation has effectively been silenced by the simple expedient of confiscating newsprint quotas and throwing editors behind bars, no questions answered.

Human rights, whether of women or of those sentenced to prison terms, are routinely trampled upon, sometimes with the active connivance of the State, as the horrifying treatment recently meted out to Asif Zardari, Benazir Bhutto8217;s husband, testifies to.

Something isclearly rotten in the state of Pakistan and the international community is finally waking up to this. In a searing indictment of contemporary Pakistan, The Economist virtually advised World Bank president John Wolfensohn to think twice before bailing out this country monetarily.

It argued that with 8220;courts acting as handmaidens to the executive8221; and without a free Press, there is little chance that money meant for development can reach the people in an open and accountable fashion. But The Economist also recognises that it is its very fragility as a modern state that has helped Pakistan grab international attention. At one point of time it lived off its strategic importance to the West; now it trades on its capacity to scare. Sponsoring holy wars, whether in Afghanistan or in Kashmir is all part of this package of fear. As the magazine puts it, 8220;In Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan has a prime minister who flirts with the excesses of Pakistan8217;s past.8221;

Unfortunately, it is India that has had to pay a heavy pricefor having so combustible a neighbour. For half a century now, Pakistan has systematically continued its sometimes high, sometimes low, intensity warfare over Kashmir.

The 600-odd infiltrators who systematically built their bases in the strategic mountain tops of the Dras, Kargil, and Batalik sectors over the last few months and brought the region to the brink of war, testify to the monumental folly of Pakistan8217;s ways. While it speaks the language of peace for international consumption, it actively unleashes the dogs of war at the border, taking care to look the other way as it does so.

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So while Islamabad shrugs away news of the Kargil infiltration as the activity of 8220;freedom fighters8221; which it has nothing to do with, its diplomats appear on television news programmes and proclaim that Kashmir was never India8217;s in the first place. This arrant duplicity, this blatant dishonesty, must be exposed for what it is. For too long has Pakistan masqueraded on the world stage as an injured party, buffeted by abullying neighbour, and got away with the lie.