Pakistan has become a country that generates two types of stories: one positively glowing, extolling the recently healthy financial markets and rising foreign direct investment; one wholly negative, after the country’s latest skirmish with one or more of rising militancy, dictatorship, government strife or old-fashioned bankruptcy.
The latest troubles in Islamabad have, rather, oddly, created a new, hybrid strain of the two. This time the country’s president and (for a short while yet) army chief, Pervez Musharraf, who rose to power eight years ago in a bloodless coup, first dissolved the Supreme Court and then imposed martial law, mirroring India’s own Emergency of 1975, when Indira Gandhi dissolved parliament and threw the country’s constitution out of the window.
Yet while the global diplomatic community has rushed to show their distaste for Musharraf’s decision by shaking their heads and tutting very loudly indeed,...
