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Reasons for hope

Kate Chisholm

Wednesday, 30th January 2008

Start the Week (BBC Radio 4); Fortunes of War (BBC Radio 4)

‘Pakistan is a dysfunctional state,’ said the writer Martin Amis in a debate about ideologies and ideologues in our post-9/11 world on Start the Week (Monday, Radio Four). He seemed curiously unaware that he was in conversation with a woman lawyer from Pakistan, Asma Jahangir, who has just been released from house arrest after defying her own government; with someone who has actually experienced the real impact of the rise of global Islamism, and who cannot afford to agree that her country is in chaotic freefall. ‘Pakistan is not dysfunctional,’ retorted the formidable-sounding Jahangir. ‘People are so resilient that, despite no gas, no electricity, they are still continuing to do their work.’ She went on, ‘It’s not like Afghanistan and I’m amazed that it still functions.’

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