By: FAROOQ HASSAN
The Nation
January 16, 2007

My friend from my Oxford days, and now a Professor and Dean of the Harvard of Kennedy School and formerly the Deputy Chief of the operations of the most sensitive institution of US government in the Clinton administration, and I were analysing over tea after Christmas some important issues of contemporary politics. While talking of the decline of President Bush’s political stock in the US the Dean said: “Nothing disturbs the mind of a politician or the public like a body bag.” He was speaking of this normative generality of common sense as it were a rule of universal application.

However sad as it may sound, this aphorism does not seem to apply to this country. In Pakistan it does not apparently matter how many people get killed so long as the highest in land are well and alive. Not a day passes when there isn’t a blast somewhere in this country but particularly in the areas next to Afghanistan in the two Pakistani provinces of Frontier and Baluchistan. As I see it these issues are likely to emerge as the top matters to affect the current phase of history of Pakistan. This perspective applies to foreign policy as much as in Pakistan’s domestic affairs.

Read the whole column here.

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