Given their promise to kill her, it sounds like the work of militants, but we'll see.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

My guess is on radical circles inside the ISI.

"If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles." Sun Tzu

or is that what you're supposed to think?

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

But I disagree with Helen about America, Europe and others getting involved, at least in any role involving the military, because the capacity to get involved simply isn't there.

Maybe not in terms of becoming a peacekeeping force, but the west has been increasingly uncomfortable with a nuclear armed pakistan as it became obvious the country was a shambles with dangerous elements beoming influential. I imagine they might come in to withdraw the weaponry to a safer place.

That said, Pakistanis are not children, and they're more sophisticated than the western press gives them credit for.  I don't think Pakistan is likely to be taken over by the looney toons, which is obviously what most people are thinking about when they refer to the nukes.

Just as the americans have Bush, the sophistication of the people is moot when the leaders, there by force of arms, are fools. And, let there be no doubt, there are influential, powerful and armed factions within Pakistan who are indistinguishable from looney toons. It's certainly becoming obvious that Pakistan cannot be governed without, at least, the passivity of the wahabinist madrassas.

Yet what will be the price of such passivity ? The middle classes in paklistan has divvied up power and corruption between them to such an extent that having their lives and freedoms constrained by "looney tunes" may be a force for destabilisation or at least the economic gutting of the country in the medium term. so any settlement now will create problems further down.

And any hope of peace in the middle east will be impossible without a peaceful pakistan. India will mobilize to Kashmir. Afghanistan will become a tinder box.

The only good thing may be that Al-qaeda may become distracted from Iraq, but as their influence there is fading, that may not matter so much.

keep to the Fen Causeway

LOL! That's an extra twist on it...

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}