I wouldn’t predict a comprehensive failure soon but, clearly, that’s the direction in which Pakistan is moving.”
NEW YORK: Here is what Stephen P Cohen, a South Asia expert and author of several books on Pakistan and the region, had to say about Pakistan, in an interview last month: “There is not going to be any good news from Pakistan for some time, if ever, because the fundamentals of the state are either failing or questionable... Pakistan has lost a lot of its ‘stateness’, that is the qualities that make a modern government function effectively. So there’s failure in Pakistan on all counts. I wouldn’t predict a comprehensive failure soon but, clearly, that’s the direction in which Pakistan is moving.”
In different circumstances, I would have dismissed this opinion as too pessimistic or even stemming from ‘sinister’ motives, as we often tend to do, but, today, it seems a fairly accurate assessment.
Aziz Akhmad
Published in The Express Tribune, March 5th, 2011.
