Next Door to War

Tariq Ali

  • Descent into Chaos: How the War against Islamic Extremism Is Being Lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid
    Allen Lane, 484 pp, £25.00, July 2008, ISBN 978 0 7139 9843 6
  • Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars within by Shuja Nawaz
    Oxford, 655 pp, £16.99, May 2008, ISBN 978 0 19 547660 6

To recapitulate. After Benazir Bhutto was assassinated last December, her will was read out to the family’s assembled political retainers. Her 19-year-old son, Bilawal, inherited the Pakistan People’s Party, but until he came of age her husband, Asif Zardari, would act as regent. The general election, postponed following her death, took place in February. The immediate impact of the stunning electoral defeat suffered by General Musharraf’s political party and his factotums was to dispel the disillusionment of the citizenry. Not for long. Musharraf is still clinging on to the presidency; Zardari is running the government with the help of his old cronies; the judges dismissed by Musharraf have still not been reinstated; the economy is a mess; and the US Air Force has started dropping bombs on the North-West Frontier Province again. Poor Pakistan.

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Vol. 30 No. 14 · 17 July 2008 » Tariq Ali » Next Door to War (print version)
Pages 15-16 | 3584 words