On The Long Road To Freedom, Finally - WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

William Dalrymple highlights two significant events in recent history that in his view has radically changed Indo-Pak relations. And Dec 27 is not one of them.

TWO EVENTS in the last three months have radically changed the course of Indo-Pak relations, and have the potential to radically alter the future direction of South Asian history.

The first of these events took place on November 24, 2007. On this day, a suicide bomber detonated himself beside a bus at the entrance of Camp Hamza, the ISI’s Islamabad headquarters. Around twenty people died in what is the first known attack by an Islamist cell against the Pakistan intelligence services. Many of the dead were ISI staffers. This event, coming as it did after three assassination attempts on General Musharraf, several other bomb attacks on army barracks, and the murder of many captured army personnel in Waziristan, is credited with persuading even the most pro-Islamist elements in the Pakistan army, and the agencies, that the jehadi Frankenstein’s monster they have created now has to be dispatched with a stake in its heart, and as soon possible.

THE SECOND event likely to change South Asian history took place on the 18th of February, 2008. On that day, Pakistan’s new urban middle class for the first time showed their new political muscle at the ballot box, voting en masse for moderate, liberal, secular and centrist parties. The Pakistanis showed that they wanted the ability to choose their own rulers, and to determine their own future. To ensure this they voted for a major change that would send the military back to their barracks and the mullahs back to their mosques.

For Pakistani liberals, 2007 was a disaster. Musharraf started the year by sacking the Chief Justice, accusing him of using his position for personal gain. Any optimism felt at the lawyers’ striking display of peaceful, pro-democratic protest was quickly dimmed by the simultaneous growth of Islamist radicalism in the heart of Islamabad — the black-clad “chicks with sticks” — and the subsequent bloody storming of Red Mosque in June. This was followed by an unprecedented wave of suicide bombings and Islamist revenge attacks against the army. [to read in full click on the heading]