'Pakistan - world's most dangerous place'

LONDON: Using a dramatic illustration of a hand grenade in the colours of Pakistan's national flag, the world's arguably most authoritative journal has anointed Pakistan "the world's most dangerous place".
The Economist newspaper, staid and doughty campaigner for free trade, free speech, in fact freedoms of every sort – within parameters - has succinctly declared that "for some time Pakistan has been the main contender for the title of most dangerous country on earth.Since the murder of Benazir Bhutto on December 27th its claim has been strengthened."
The Economist's depiction of Pakistan as a dark and frightening country, possibly the most dangerous on earth, has got the chatterati going in many Western capitals. In London, which twins with Washington in the possibly delusional line that gives former General President Pervez Musharraf license to rule, the characterisation is seen as a huge blow to Western attempts to gloss over Pakistan's obvious lack of democracy.
The Economist, which quaintly styles itself a newspaper in the way it was more than 150 years ago, offers many reasons that Pakistan may now "seem a frightening place". It points out, in its newest issue, that Bhutto's December 27 assassination frighteningly illustrated that "terrorists could strike in Rawalpindi, headquarters of the Pakistani army, despite having advertised threats against Miss Bhutto, and despite the slaughter of some 150 people in Karachi on the day she returned from exile last October, (which) suggests no one is safe".
And it adds that, "if, as many in Pakistan believe, the security services were themselves complicit, that is perhaps even scarier. It would make it even harder to deal with the country's many other fissures: the sectarian divide between Sunni and Shia Muslims; the ethnic tensions between Punjabis, Sindhis, Pushtuns and 'mohajir' immigrants from India; the insurgency in Baluchistan; and the spread of the 'Pakistani Taliban' out of the border tribal areas into the heartlands."
The journal concludes that "for too long, Mr Musharraf has been allowed to pay lip-service to democratic forms, while the United States has winked at his blatant disdain for the substance". And in a crushing blow to Western aspirations the world will accept "the justification" Musharraf has been the pre-eminent source of "stability" in the world's most dangerous place, it concludes that it's time Washington and London accept "that democracy is not the alternative to stability. It is Pakistan's only hope."