Chaos shrouds the minds of Pakistanis, especially those associated with the Musharraf regime or at its receiving end. There’s no telling what the general will unleash next and how those involved will react to it. He has kept everyone guessing, and that includes his American backers. US diplomats have been at pains to explain to Pakistanis that Washington supports neither emergency rule nor the curbs placed on the media.

Their silence on the booting out of an independent judiciary, however, is not lost on the average Pakistani. To him it says more than words could, hence a hectic people-targeted diplomacy on the part of US envoys here. What the Americans fail to understand is that after their invasion of Iraq they have little credibility left in the Muslim world. The two judges who did give relief to the Lal Masjid suicide bombers-to-be are part of Musharraf’s recently handpicked Supreme Court. US diplomats do not have an enviable job to do in Pakistan.

Here’s why: while life seems normal on the streets, it takes less than a superficial scratch to sense what’s simmering beneath the surface. Young, upwardly mobile urban youngsters, speaking English with a foreign accent and attending private schools and colleges — the lot everyone thought were irredeemably depoliticised — are dealing with what for all practical purposes is martial law in a garb their predecessors a generation ago never knew. Their resistance manifests itself in subtler ways than taking to the street in a fit of emotion. They are choosing to discuss matters, organise seminars, hold candlelight vigils, start email and sms chain petitions and wear black bands to register their protest. Yet police barge into campuses, beat up these students black and blue, and arrest them by the truckload every day.

... contd.