around the internet (on pakistan)

(It's been a busy few weeks. I'm still sorting myself out.)

In the meantime, some links on recent events: fittingly, I spent Monday the 18th with dear S., having taken the chinatown bus up to Boston for a quick visit. We checked election results briefly, but spent most of the afternoon wandering around the damp city. It wasn't until the next morning, back in New York, that I got a sense of the significance of the outcome. Some quick links here:

• Sepoy provides liveblog, updates, and maps;
• Cyril Almeida (another former resident of the Holywell annex) provides further detail in Dawn;
• Mohsin Hamid pens an emotional op-ed for the Guardian;
• Anil Kalhan considers the prospects for a rollback of Musharraf's misadventures;
• Various people talk on the radio;
• Juan Cole says smart things;
• and Barnett Rubin demonstrates, once again, his unusual gift for marrying sensible analysis to lively storytelling, on questions of cross-border Pashtun politics and the ANP's win, with diversions via "Notes on the Balinese Cockfight", 1920s anti-colonialist movements, and reappropriated US election-coverage memes ('latte-drinkers', heh). I'm referring to Mush as "Kipling's epigone" from hereon out.

I can't really add anything worthwhile to the above, so will just say that I am heartened by the outcome of the elections, disgusted (as usual) by the tepid response of the US government, and cautiously hopeful that the incoming coalition may be able to undo some of the damage wrought by the Emergency and the preceding events. The lawyers' movement is putting pressure on the parties to prioritize the restoration of the judiciary--and they are still planning a long march to Islamabad if the judges are not reinstated by 7 March. Stay tuned--though perhaps not to Aaj, as the crackdown on the media continues apace.