On my last evening in Lahore I met a journalist who had been receiving letters from a group that called itself the Taliban-e-Waziristan. The letters warned of violent action if the journalist continued to support ‘liberal, Western’ ideas. ‘We had the letters checked out’ the journalist said ‘and they turned out to be genuine. But, nobody knows what we should be doing to protect ourselves. It’s a bad situation and we can only hope that there are genuine elections soon and things improve as a result’.

Can there be free, fair and ‘transparent’ elections soon in Pakistan? When I asked people this question I got almost the same answer from everyone. They said that if the Americans want elections to be free and fair they will be but there is no sign yet that they have given up on their favourite military dictator. No sign that anyone in Washington has understood that if Pakistan is on the verge of becoming jihad central then part of the blame lies with American foreign policy in South Asia. It’s time to let their favourite military dictator go.