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What Is Wrong With Pakistan?

Posted on 1st August 2017

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This report on the BBC really highlights what is wrong in Pakistan.

A 12-year-old girl was raped, and "a jirga [village council] [...] ordered the rape of a 16-year-old girl [a member of the original rapist's family] as punishment". The police have, at least, now registered a complaint against 25 people for this outrageous act.

This kind of failure of the rule of law is endemic in Pakistan. There are attacks and murders on the street for supposed acts of blasphemy, there are lawless areas in the north ruled by the Taliban or by local tribal leaders. There was the murder of 141 people, 132 of them children, at an army-run school in Peshawar, in 2014. There are constant accusations of official Pakistani support of terrorism in Kashmir.

A very good friend of mine worked for 6 months in Pakistan, and tells me that it is a wonderful place, and the people are very friendly, but the fact remains that it is a dangerous place to be, both for locals and visitors; this danger is limiting the amount of foreign investment, and the amount of international trade, and impacting the lives of Pakistani citizens. The economy will never really climb out of the hole it is in, until this problem is fixed.