Not that the second scenario would hold: “Pakistan is not Myanmar. Sooner rather than later, martial law would have to be removed. That is when General Musharraf and Pakistan would arrive at the beginning and struggle to invent the wheel all over again.”

Political straws

And what of Nawaz Sharif’s travel plans? During proceedings in the Supreme Court on a case pertaining to his deportation to Jeddah in September, “Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan (said) he had been asked by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz by telephone to arrange a special aircraft”. Meanwhile: “The court adjourned the proceedings till November 8 with an observation that keeping in view the complex nature of allegations involving high-ups, it considered it appropriate to adjourn the matter with instructions that the judgment passed in the Nawaz Sharif case holding that any citizen of Pakistan could not be restrained from entering the country still held the field and, therefore, should be implemented in letter and spirit.” (Dawn, October 31).

South by northwest

In Swat, fighting continues between “pro-Taleban” militants loyal to Maulana Fazlullah and the security forces. According to Dawn (November 2), “Militants on Thursday claimed to have captured 44 militiamen in the Khwazakhela sub-district after day-long heavy fighting in which the government said over 60 militants had been killed.” The newspaper’s editorials have raised alarm over militancy “being allowed to spread from Fata (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) to settled areas like Swat where it is casting a long shadow.”

In Thursday’s Daily Times, Ejaz Haider carried forward on this thought: “The state’s approach to insurgency in parts of the North-West Frontier Province, right now in Swat, suffers from two problems... The frontier is all but lost. And it’s a full-spectrum failure, ranging from military reverses to political and ideological loss. This is not a pessimistic view; it’s a realistic assessment. Consider. What is happening in Swat is a replay of what we have seen in Waziristan, what we are witnessing in other tribal agencies, Bajaur for instance, and what we shall witness in the settled lowlands of NWFP if this tide cannot be stemmed... The second problem. Even if we discount the military disadvantage the security forces have in exactly the same proportion that the militants have the advantage on the ground, we have a scary scenario: the state may be trying to do something for which it has no popular, political backing.”

... contd.