Waterloo, ONTARIO — For outsiders as for Pakistanis, the choice is between worse and worst: a militantly Islamic, 160 million strong, nuclear-armed failed state at the strategic crossroads of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. Pakistan's fate has rested historically on the three A's: Allah, the army and America. Recently, President Pervez Musharraf has been triangulated ever more tightly by the jihadists, Islamists and judiciary.
Pakistan was an artificial creation carved out of British India with mass bloodshed. Its founding ideology of Islam was unable to hold the country together as Bangladesh became independent, and has proven incapable to date of uniting the various clans and tribes into one cohesive nation. Civilian governments alternated with military and competed with each other in the race to the bottom of incompetence and corruption.
Enmity with India gave the military the alibi to establish ascendancy over all affairs of the nation and also explains the third enduring force of Pakistani politics.