Even before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Asif Ali Zardari broke the ice by meeting on the sidelines of a regional summit in Yekaterinburg, Russia last month, the real question over talks between India and Pakistan has not been about the form but the substance.

After the bitterness of last year’s attacks on Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants, can India and Pakistan work their way back to a roadmap for an agreement on Kashmir reached two years ago? Although never finalised, the roadmap opened up the intellectual space for an eventual peace deal. This week’s meetings between India and Pakistan on the sidelines of a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt could give some clues on whether it has any chance of being  revived.

India broke off the formal peace process, the so-called composite dialogue, with Pakistan after the three-day assault on Mumbai blamed on the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group once nurtured by Pakistan to fight India in Kashmir.  But even before the attack, informal behind-the-scenes talks on Kashmir held under former president Pervez Musharraf had fallen victim to the political turbulence which led to his ouster last year, and any hope of reviving them under the new civilian government led by Zardari was dashed altogether by the Mumbai assault.

Ahead of the NAM summit in Sharm el-Sheikh — during which the foreign secretaries of both countries will meet on the sidelines, to be followed by talks between Singh and Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani - the two countries have been trying to put together the pieces of their shattered relationship.

In an unprecedented move, Pakistan has said it will put on trial five Pakistanis suspected of involvement in the Mumbai attacks, including senior Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, accused of masterminding the assault. Pakistan has traditionally refused to acknowledge in public the role of anti-India militant groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and putting on trial a commander like Lakhvi is a major departure. India had insisted it would not resume formal peace talks until Pakistan took action against those behind the Mumbai attacks.

The Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan has also held talks with the head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), according to Prime Minister Singh,  a move that would have been unheard of — at least in public — in the past when India accused the ISI of driving a separatist revolt in Kashmir that erupted in Kashmir in 1989. Pakistan Army chief General Pervez Ashfaq Kayani also suggested this month that the internal threat facing Pakistan was greater than the external threat,  a comment seen as easing — albeit perhaps only marginally — the military’s traditional view of India as its primary enemy.

And acccording to Dawn newspaper, Gilani has been seeking political consensus in the country’s approach to India ahead of the meetings in Sharm el-Sheikh, including winning support from powerful opposition leader and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Singh on his part has said he is willing to meet Pakistan more than half way, while also insisting Pakistan must take action to dismantle militant groups which target India.

So on that basis, what can be expected from the meetings in Sharm el-Sheikh? Pakistan is keen to resume the composite dialogue, but it is unclear whether India would be ready to reopen the formal peace process despite much progress since Singh and Zardari met in Yakaterinburg.

According to the Hindu newspaper, the stage is set for a re-engagement between India and Pakistan but this could stop short of resuming the composite dialogue — primarily because India does not believe the civilian government alone can commit to acting against militant groups. Any decision to take on militant groups would have to be made by the Pakistan Army and the ISI rather than the civilian government.

“For that reason, the immediate resumption of the composite dialogue is not on the cards. The most likely outcome of Sharm-el-Shaikh is the two Foreign Secretaries being tasked with reviewing the overall structure of bilateral engagement,” it said.

To a large extent however, the focus on when and whether the composite dialogue is resumed is one of form rather than substance. While it is symbolically important, the formal peace process has rarely been as productive as back-channel diplomacy. One of the bigger breakthroughs in recent years – an agreement for a ceasefire on the Line of Control dividing Kashmir in 2003 — was agreed in behind-the-scenes talks.

On matters of substance, India and Pakistan have long road ahead.

While India is looking for an eventual dismantling of militant groups like the Laskkar-e-Taiba based in Pakistan’s heartland Punjab province, the Pakistan Army is fighting militants from the Pakistani Taliban on its western border with Afghanistan - and few believe it to be either capable of or willing to take on every group at once.  On top of that, any attempt to shut down the Laskhar-e-Taiba could make it even more dangerous if it were to drive it further underground or break it up into splinter groups.

And ultimately, Pakistan is seen as unlikely to dismantle a group like the Laskhar-e-Taiba without a peace deal with India, while New Delhi will not offer a peace deal until the militants are disarmed. That’s where the intellectual space opened up by the roadmap agreement tentatively reached between Musharraf and Singh’s government in 2007 becomes interesting.  Although there was to be no exchange of territory in divided Kashmir, the two countries did tentatively agree to try to make borders irrelevant by allowing trade and travel across the two parts of the former kingdom they each control. They were also trying to agree on some form of shared supervision on issues affecting Kashmir.

Can and should Pakistan and India try to work their way back to that roadmap and then build on it? Would Pakistan’s civilian government be willing to acknowledge a roadmap negotiated by Musharraf after fighting hard to drive him out of office? At what point will India be convinced that Pakistan has taken enough action against those involved in the Mumbai attacks before it is ready to talk about peace? How will Pakistan’s civilian government be able to convince India that it has the powerful Pakistan Army on board in any negotiations? And should both countries even be aiming for an over-arching peace deal, or rather trying to progress in small steps through trade and other confidence-building measures before tackling Kashmir?

Those are all big outstanding questions. The meetings in Sharm el-Sheikh, on the southern tip of the Sinai desert, might provide some signposts.

(Photos: Zardari and Singh in Yekaterinburg; Dal lake in Kashmir; Wagah border crossing)

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has dropped a plan to travel to Egypt next month where he was expected to hold further talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh following their meeting in Russia this week.

Pakistan's foreign office has said Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani will attend the summit of Non-Aligned Nations in the Egyptian city of Sharm El Sheikh although soon after the Singh-Zardari meeting in Yekaterinburg the two sides announced plans for a second meeting in July.

Has something gone wrong?

Newspapers on both sides of the border read more into the change of plans than just a normal swap of duties between the prime minister and the president.

The Dawn linked the cancellation to displeasure over Singh telling Zardari in the full glare of the world's media that Pakistan should not allow its soil to be used for militant attacks on India.

The soft-spoken Singh's rather unexpected remark right at the beginning of the first-to-face encounter with Pakistan's leaders since the Mumbai attacks in November ensured that the meeting was unpleasant from the outset, it said.

Pakistan's The News said New Delhi had handed Zardari a "well staged slight" but Islamabad was setting it aside because at the end of the day the two sides were talking again.

Indian newspapers were less restrained, saying Zardari dropped out of the next meeting after Singh's blunt talk and that Islamabad wanted to send the message that his rather public reprimand had not gone down well with Pakistan.

Did India over-reach then? Perhaps too much shouldn't be read into all this. The Hindu points out that this may not yet be the last word, as Zardari has changed travel plans at the last minute several times.

At home though, they are applauding Singh both for his tough talk and the realisation that you have to engage the "imploding neighbour" because that is the neighbourhood it lives in.

Singh had served notice that India and indeed its neighbours were going to see a more determined prime minister in the months ahead, "a far cry from the man who was seemingly too timid to take on his tormentors during the previous five years," as New Delhi's Mint wrote.

And columnist and former ambassador Kuldip Nayar said the meeting hadn't come a day too soon.

"Too much time and too much money have been wasted in talking against each other instead of talking to each other. The two countries have not experienced peace since independence; 62 years is a long period for the people to suffer estrangement and live in fear of war all the time," he wrote.

Are they slipping back into talking at each other?

As encounters go between the leaders of India and Pakistan, the meeting in Russia between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Asif Ali Zardari — their first since last November’s Mumbai attacks — was a somewhat stolid affair.

It had none of the unscripted drama of the handshake famously offered by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee when they met at a South Asian summit in Kathmandu in January 2002, while the two countries mobilised for war following an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001. Musharraf’s gesture made little difference in a military stand-off which continued for another six months.

Nor did it carry the warmth of a summit meeting between Vajpayee and then prime minister Nawaz Sharif in Lahore in 1999, which raised high hopes of a breakthrough peace deal between India and Pakistan. Those hopes were dashed months later when the two countries fought a bitter conflict in the mountains above Kargil, on the Line of Control dividing disputed Kashmir.

But for all its absence of drama, or more precisely because of this, did the meeting between Singh and Zardari lay a more solid foundation for what is likely to be a long and difficult process of repairing relations? 

The two leaders stopped well short of resuming a formal peace process broken off by India following the Mumbai attacks, and Singh delivered a stern warning to Zardari that Pakistan must not allow militants to operate from its territory. “I am happy to meet you, but my mandate is to tell you that the territory of Pakistan must not be used for terrorism,” he told Zardari at a meeting on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Yekaterinburg, in Russia.

But officials nonetheless held out the prospect of another meeting between Zardari and Singh at a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Egypt in July and said that senior officials would hold further talks to exchange information on terrorism. Semantics aside, that means the two countries are talking again after a deep crisis in relations following the Mumbai attacks, although India has insisted it will not reopen the so-called composite dialogue peace process until Pakistan takes action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group it blames for the assault.

So where do they go from here?  Analysts see little hope for now of the two countries being able to pick up where they left off in a peace process which some say had nearly led to a breakthrough on Kashmir. 

But there is increasing debate about how the two countries might improve the way they engage with each other to get out of the on-again, off-again turbulent peace process which has failed to deliver a settlement in more than 60 years. 

And that is where the Yekaterinburg meeting — stolid, cautious and lacking in drama — might prove to be a turning point.

“Mr. Singh is trying to set out a coherent Pakistan policy,” former Indian ambassador G. Parthasarathy wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. “To resume the formal dialogue process, careful preparatory work behind the scenes would be necessary.”

“As we learn from the recent past and look ahead, India must reconsider three core assumptions about the peace process. The first is the belief that we are negotiating with a coherent entity that is capable of making rational choices. Whether we should engage Pakistan or not is a question that makes sense only if treat our western neighbour as a black box,” wrote Indian strategic analyst C. Raja Mohan in the Indian Express.

“New Delhi must instead recognise the enormous internal divergence in Pakistan towards India and develop an approach that helps reasonable voices across the border prevail over the incurably hostile ones,” he wrote. ”In short, the very purpose of our engagement must be to produce a systemic change in Pakistan. It stands to reason then that we must not suspend the engagement every time India’s adversaries put up an obstacle.”

 Signs of a new and more methodical approach that might yield results for people in both countries seeking peace?  Or too slow and too cautious for Pakistan’s civilian government, which would like to see an early breakthrough to ease tensions on its eastern border as it tries to beat back Taliban militants on its western border with Afghanistan?

(Photos: President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajapayee shake hands in Kathmandu, January 2002; Vajpayee meets Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at Lahore summit in 1999; Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Asif Ali Zardari in Yekaterinburg, 2009)

Ahmed Rashid’s article on Pakistan in the New York Review of Books makes for an alarming read.  Excerpts do not do justice to it,  as you have to read the whole thing to understand why he thinks Pakistan really is on the brink, but here are a few:

“American officials are in a concealed state of panic, as I observed during a recent visit to Washington at the time when 17,000 additional troops were being dispatched to Afghanistan. The Obama administration unveiled its new Afghan strategy on March 27, only to discover that Pakistan is the much larger security challenge, while US options there are far more limited.”

“The last two years have bought some hope in the growth of the middle class, an articulate and increasingly influential civil society made up partly of urban professionals and publicly involved women. Most Pakistanis are not Islamic extremists and believe in moderate and spiritual forms of Islam, including Sufism. However, Pakistan is now reaching a tipping point. There is a chronic failure of leadership, whether by civilian politicians or the army. President Zardari’s decision to invade Swat in early May came only after pressure was applied by the Obama administration and the army and the government had been left with no other palatable options. But with the Taliban opening new fronts, it will soon become impossible for the army to respond to the multiple threats it faces on so many geographically distant battlefields. The Taliban’s campaigns to assassinate politicians and administrators have demoralized the government.”

“The Obama administration can provide money and weapons but it cannot recreate the state’s will to resist the Taliban and pursue more effective policies. Pakistan desperately needs international aid, but its leaders must first define a strategy that demonstrates to its own people and other nations that it is willing to stand up to the Taliban and show the country a way forward.”

There has been much alarmist talk this year about Pakistan, notably with U.S. adviser David Kilcullen saying in March that the Pakistani state could collapse within six months, followed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying in April that Pakistan posed a “mortal threat” to the world. Most of that talk has been dismissed as exaggerated, including by Juan Cole in his blog Informed Comment and other analysts. The country has a strong civil society, which only in March took to the streets to demand an independent judiciary and the reinstatement of the Chief Justice. It has a powerful military, and whatever its critics say about its policies, the Pakistan Army is intensely patriotic and is hardly likely to hand over control of the country to Islamist militants who do not even believe in the existence of the nation state. 

Yet looking at the flood of refugees in Pakistan — above one million and still rising, according to the UNHCR — you do have to wonder how much time Pakistan has to right itself.  President Asif Ali Zardari says the current offensive in the Swat valley is just the start of an operation that will take the army  deep into the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.  How many more internal refugees can the country cope with, especially given that it traces its current instability to the three million refugees who flooded in from Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979?

Part of the problem is that some of the solutions for Pakistan lie in the long term.  To the west, an end to the fighting in Afghanistan would stop instability washing over into Pakistan. But no one expects a political settlement in Afghanistan any time soon. To the east, peace with India would boost the economy by encouraging trade and give the Pakistan Army an opportunity to readjust its mindset away from seeing India as an existential threat. But India remains wary of Pakistan after last November’s attack on Mumbai and any moves made by the newly re-elected government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to reduce tension are likely to be slow and tentative.

If Pakistan is indeed, as Rashid writes, reaching a tipping point, it does not have the time to wait for long-term solutions.

(Photos: Refugees caught up in a dust storm/Faisal Mahmood)

With Pakistan facing a refugee crisis, and its army engaged in intense fighting in the Swat valley, the question of who makes decisions in the country and how these are taken may not seem like the top priority.

But Shuja Nawaz at the Atlantic Council makes a strong argument in favour of deepening institutional mechanisms for decision-making. While President Asif Ali Zardari, who has retained the sweeping presidential powers of his predecessor Pervez Musharraf, made many decisions himself and also personally represented Pakistan diplomatically on trips overseas, the institutional process of decision-making that would allow coordination between the different branches of the country’s government is lacking, he writes. As a result the government seemed unprepared to deal with the million refugees created by Pakistan’s military offensive against the Taliban. 

“If there had been an institutional mechanism for national security analysis and decision-making with a clear central command authority … the exodus would have been anticipated and arrangements put in place to look after the displaced people,” he writes. ”The National Security Council has been abolished. The Defence Committee of the cabinet does not appear to have met to discuss the crisis. And in the absence of a National Security Adviser, sacked by the prime minister in a moment of pique following the Mumbai attack, there is no formal mechanism for studying such issues nor a central point in government to ensure that all parts of the administration work together to anticipate problems and resolve issues.”

“A highly personalized decision-making process remains in place, informed in some cases more by anecdote than by analysis. Most exchanges on military issues take place directly between the President and the Army Chief. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is often by-passed. Coordination of the fight against the militants between Interior Ministry and the military is desultory at best,” he says.

“The army, still unequipped and untrained for counterinsurgency, may yet be able to clear the Swat valley of the militants. But, as a senior military officer confided to me, the army will be unable to hold the territory indefinitely. Providing governance and justice is the civilians’ job. And there is no evidence of civilian institutions or a police force to do the needful. So the Taliban may return to fill the vacuum, as they did before.”

By most accounts, Pakistan faces a long war if it is to take on the Taliban while also rebuilding shattered communities and bringing much-needed economic development to its north-west.  But success in long wars tends to depend more on logistics than on leadership. It will be interesting to see how well Pakistan develops the institutional mechanisms needed to provide those logistics.

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. The writer is the High Commissioner of Pakistan to Britain.

By Wajid Shamsul Hasan 

Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah had a vision of a modern, progressive and secular Pakistan. Yet some are trying to replace it with a Talibanised state in which schools are closed, heads chopped off, women flogged in public and a pagan religion takes over in the name of Islam that Allah the Most Merciful bequeathed to humankind through the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) to enlighten the darkened world.

Ever since its advent, Islam has been a religion of peace and compassion with no room for animosity for any other religion. Its fundamental tenet is Huququl Ibad - that is, you would not do unto others what you would not want to be done to you.
 
Not withstanding the ugly facts as to how we have come to the present tragic pass we must remember that the world is a stage where players play their part and fade away. However, when it comes to a leadership role, some leave indelible footprints on the sands of time. Others who play foul with the destiny of a nation are consigned to the dustbin of history or are acknowledged as unavoidable footnotes mentioned for their misdeeds.

While not condoning the questionable role of some of the civilian leaders of the past, members of the superior judiciary, civil bureaucracy and selective elite, the most devastating impact on Pakistan’s growth on sound democratic lines, in keeping with Mr Jinnah’s unequivocal emphasis that religion shall have nothing to do with the business of the state, was dealt by the constant direct extra-constitutional interventions by military dictators for over 31 years.

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Some readers have suggested that Pakistan’s politicians close ranks to beat back the Taliban advance, and that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s party re-unites with the ruling coalition as a first step.

It is an idea that seems to be gaining traction, going by a spate of media reports  The Financial Times said that Sharif could consider joining a unity coalition led by President Asif Ali Zardari, citing a senior member of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (Muslim).

It quoted the politician as saying that Sharif wanted to reassure foreign powers, especially the United States, he had no intention of trying to de-stabilise the year-old  government.

The reports come just before President Barack Obama sits down with Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Washington for security talks and at a time when concern over Pakistan’s stability in the face of the Taliban gains has reached fever-pitch.

Pakistan’s Dawn said key western capitals seemed to be pushing, or at least, hoping for a reunion between Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party and Sharif’s group. The two could form a formidable alliance and send a powerful signal of a united face against the militancy, it said. The PML (N)’s popularity in the key province of Punjab - where many expect the next wave of militancy - and Sharif’s right-of-centre conservative credentials could help bolster the PPP in its battle with the militants.

But is Sharif going to take the bait? Dawn says it perhaps makes more sense politically for his party to watch from the sidelines while the Zardari government struggles with the militancy, deploys the military option and further loses public support.

And what of Sharif? Even if western capitals have discovered virtues in him in this hour of Pakistatan’s battle with militants, can the former premier long accused of sympathies for hardline Islamist groups really be seen as the choice of the West? Wouldn’ t that be the kiss of death even before he started out in the prevailing climate in Pakistan?

“Once in a position of authority or high office, Nawaz is certain to disavow U.S. support because identification with the U.S. in the present political climate is tantamount to political, and possibly actual, suicide for a Pakistani politician,” argues Nightwatch, an intelligence analysis website.

Now that President Asif Ali Zardari has agreed to reinstate Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and   offered to challenge a court decision against his rival Nawaz Sharif, is he going to come under pressure to give up his powers to dismiss parliament, another popular demand?

For many Pakistanis, that is the next stage in the rapid emasculation of Zardari’s presidency.  Article 58-2B of the constitution, which many blame for much of the country’s political instability, has several times been used to sack elected governments. Zardari had promised to ditch it but has yet to deliver.

“The next thing is to throw (out) 58-2B - it will fix the super power of president then,” was a post on microblogging site Twitter where activists, lawyers and ordinary people, caught up in the drama of the moment, shared information and pictures in real time. 

He has already lost his Information Minister. Sherry Rehman, a long-time confidante of his late wife Benazir Bhutto,  abruptly quit after the government temporarily blocked transmission of  the popular GEO news television channel.

Some other members of his party have been critical of his actions, deepening his isolation behind the presidential building in Islamabad where he increasingly has been cofined in recent weeks because of security concerns.

But as the Washiington Post reports it is the breakdown of his authority on the ground, especially in Punjab, that should worry him even more.

“As the demonstrations escalated in Lahore, police first responded with volleys of tear gas. But by mid-afternoon they suddenly withdrew from the streets, while numerous city and provincial officials were reported to have resigned. The swift collapse of authority signaled the end of Zardari’s bid to seize control of Punjab, the most politically influential region of the country, and raised serious questions about his ability to remain president.”

Some people thought the shift in power was already happening. Al Jazeera in its report noted that it was Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani who made the announcement to the nation  about the the decision to reinstate the chief judge.

Nawaz Sharif was also expected to meet Gilani at some point on Monday, and it is Gilani who is likely to reconcile any outstanding rifts within his party as a result of Zardari’s actions during the last few days, it said. “In short, Gilani is the man to watch.”

Zardari “is in a blind alley, completely isolated,” and may have to hand much of his power to Gilani as the price for remaining in office, said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a politics professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, in this report here.

Is his loneliness complete or is this only one twist in a test of political nerves?

[Reuters photo of a protest in Lahore and  President Asif Ali Zardari]

Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani is much talked about these days as the one national figure who could lean on Pakistan’s warring politicians to back down from a confrontation threatening the stability of the country. The question is over how he would intervene while maintaining a commitment to keep the army out of politics.

Most analysts have ruled out a coup for now and in an interview with PBS Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he believed Kayani was committed to a civilian government.

But between a military coup and non-intervention lies a huge grey area in terms of how far Kayani will, or can, go to put pressure on political rivals President Asif Ali Zardari and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to back down.

In an editorial in The News, defence analyst Ikram Sehgal says that while negotiators shuttle back and forth between the two parties to try to find a compromise, “the ultimate answer for this political confrontation will probably emanate from Rawalpindi”, the headquarters of the Pakistan Army. “While the Army has no business running the government, will it be responsible and/or patriotic to stand by and see the government and the opposition run the country out of existence?” he asks.

Indeed a meeting between Kayani and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on Wednesday raised speculation that the army chief may have already begun to put pressure on the government to find a compromise.

In an editorial in the Daily Times, Ejaz Haider writes that Kayani could try to get Gilani to convince Zardari that his current confrontation with Sharif has to stop.

“The army chief is a worried man, as he should be. His troops are spread thin. He is fighting against an elusive enemy; and he is fighting a war for which there is not much public acceptance,” he writes. “The irreducible minimum he needs is political stability because with stability comes the possibility of a popular buy-in for counter-insurgency.”

While ruling out a coup, he writes that “what Kayani can do is to try and get the prime minister to signal to Zardari that the current confrontation is not sustainable; that some compromise formula needs to be arrived at to defuse the situation. Of course, the ‘or else’ qualifier for greater effect would be welcome.”

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Maybe this always happens at times of national upheaval. But there is a surprising disconnect between the immediacy of the crisis facing Pakistan as expressed by Pakistani bloggers and the more slow-moving debate taking place in the outside world over the right strategy to adopt towards both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Reading Pakistani blogs since confrontation between the country’s two main political parties exploded and comparing them to international commentaries is a bit like watching men shout that their house is on fire, and then panning over to the fire station where the folks in charge are debating which type of water hose works best.

With lawyers and supporters of opposition leader Nawaz Sharif vowing to blockade parliament later this week over the refusal of President Asif Ali Zardari to reinstate fired judges, the country is steeling itself for violent street protests, which in turn could provide easy targets for suicide bombers seeking to add to the mayhem.  Sharif has talked about “a prelude to a revolution”, prompting the government to threaten him with charges of sedition.

Writing in Pak Tea House, a blogger who had insisted right up until February that Pakistan would turn out all right said this had been based on the assumption political parties would pull back from outright confrontation in the interests of the country. “I was wrong. And so faced with altered facts, I have changed my opinion. Pakistan is unraveling.”

The blog Changing up Pakistan makes the inevitable comparison with watching a car accident in slow motion, while a blogger at Deadpan Thoughts complains about March madness. “When policies are decided on the streets, things never come to a good end,” he writes.

Metroblogging Lahore carries a series of photos of protests in Lahore. Scroll down for his photo of a live mouse hanging from a protest board - the kind of tiny detail that stays with you perhaps more than the other images. “The little mouse was trembling and paying with its life for someone else’s crimes,” the photographer writes.

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