Many ways to die in Pakistan

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Monday, July 26, 2010 - 7:34 AM Share

The headlines in Dawn struck me on Saturday, bringing home how many ways there are to die in Pakistan. On this particular day, you could go by unidentified gunmen, mob violence, flood, bus plunges (though this accident took place in the part of Kashmir that the newspaper calls "Indian-administered") and of course drone strikes:

Unidentified gunmen kill KP information minister's son

Four killed as Karachi remains tense

Death toll in Balochistan flood reaches 60

At least 25 die as bus plunges into Kashmir river

US missile strike kills 16 militants in South Waziristan

AAMIR QURESHI/AFP/Getty Images

EXPLORE:SOUTH ASIA, MEDIA, PAKISTAN

(2)

HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE

SOLDIERSDIARY

1:46 PM ET

July 26, 2010

another top 10

sounds like another great "Top 10" list. I would add Earthquake to the list. Seems like that happens every couple of years.

MARTY MARTEL

7:37 PM ET

July 26, 2010

Pakistan suffering from self-inflicted wounds

Pakistan projects sympathetic image as a victim of terror, even as it is, in fact, the creator of terrorism. So Pakistan is suffering from self-inflicted wounds and will continue to do so as long as it shelters, nurtures, supports and protects innumerable terrorist outfits on its soil.

Nobody forced Pakistani government to facilitate relocation of Osama bin Laden from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996. Benazir Bhutto’s democratic government of Pakistan chose to do so of its own free will.

Nobody forced Pakistani Army and Intelligence to create what ex-CIA official Bruce Reidel called a ‘jihadist Frankenstein monster’ in 1990s. Pakistani Army and Intelligence chose to do so with the full financing provided by Pakistan’s democratic governments at the time.

Pakistan boldly holds the Western world to ransom. It garners generous financial aid and military supplies from the US and has successfully projected itself as recourse of last resort in its geographical theatre. It runs circles around international sanctions and bans by nurturing a large number of home-grown terrorist outfits forever changing nomenclature. In addition, it maintains seemingly freelance non-state actors that allow it the fig-leaf of plausible deniability.

And in a masterful demonstration of how to manage chaos, Pakistan keeps its domestic situation in destabilized ferment and flux by stoking sectarian, that is, Sunni versus Shiite violence, and religious tensions between Islamic progressives and fundamentalists, rent-collecting on such issues from the oil-rich Islamic world as well.

For the further bamboozling of the West, Pakistan uses its blow-hot-blow-cold relationship with the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and its hosting of the Al Qaeda as adroit bargaining chips.

It flaunts its strategic relationship with China with the latter’s tacit support. This enables Pakistan to be muscular about its armed nuclear options and hint menacingly about the possibility of its nuclear weapons falling to the Taliban as well.