Asif Zardari's Road to Swat: Final entrapment?

Pakistani Army is fighting Pakistanis in Swat. Yes, most of those the Army is fighting in Swat and Mingora are Pakistanis. Millions of Pakistanis have been asked to leave their homes and towns. This is a grotesque spectacle of a nation trying to live up to the whims and fancies of 'international community' which is just another word for America and its closest ally, Britain. How did it come to this? What is next? Simple questions but with no straigh forward answers. However, President Asif Ali Zardari is one very solid reason for all of this.

He should not have been the President of Pakistan for all the obvious reasons. Will a man of his repute make it to be the President of the US or become the Prime Minister of Britain? No. Of course not.

He is not just the President but by now he may be remembered in history as the chief architect of Pakistan's final dismemberment. Pakistan will be dismembered geographically as well as militarily. Pakistan's nukes will go and a civil war will leave the country into at least two or more administrative regions. Each will find its own Zardari to head the administration and the world will see CNN flash the happy images of the Zardaris at photo ops.

History gives us the example of one such country on the map; Yoguslavia. In the last decade of the twentieth century, this European country has been dismembered. Minimum 150,000 and perhaps as many as 250,000 people have died in the process. The former Yoguslavia is now five states: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. But the reality on the ground is at least a nine part split. Bosnia is still divided between a "Serb Republic" and a Croat-Bosniak Federation, which in turn is effectively divided between Croat-controlled and Bosniak- (or "Muslim"- ) controlled areas. The Federal Republic of Yoguslavia is divided between Kosovo, and the republic of Montenegro. You can clearly see that former Yoguslavia is in tatters; it makes twelve ethnically defined parts with deep suspcisions of each other.

History is a good teacher but we are not good students. We don't have it in us to learn from it. I can see on the Internet many maps popping up every day of a divided Pakistan or suggestions to divide Pakistan along those suggested ethnicities. I see gloom but not all is lost. We are not at a point of no return. Not yet. We are still one country with slightly less heightened feelings of nationhood amongst its citizens but enough is there to sustain Pakistan through the difficult times.

Asif Ali Zardari is from Venus and the rest of us are from Mars. He may buy an island and call it Pakistan and live there -- happily everafter. I can see Hussain Haqqani making the following announcement, "All rise." Everyone does except Mr. Zardari.
"Fellow Pakistanis on this island, I give you President Asif Zardari, the President of Pakistan, for ever."
Booooooooooo!!!!!!!!