The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State

by Declan Walsh

flocked to the reopened Manghopir shrine, where the sacred crocodiles once again luxuriated in its murky green waters, feasting on small bags of meat. ‘Peshawar opened the world’s eyes,’ said a policeman posted outside the shrine. And yet. The decade of mayhem that followed the Red Mosque siege in 2007 had exacted a fearsome toll. Some 63,000 Pakistanis had been killed and 66,000 injured in violence of various kinds – Taliban bombings, American drone strikes, sectarian bombings, the war in Balochistan and fighting on the border with India, among other causes. Over a thousand schools had been destroyed, and the land’s ancient lattice of religious diversity had been ripped to shreds. Even the glowing, 800-year-old Sufi shrine at Sehwan Sharif did not escape: in 2017, a blast ripped through a crowd of pilgrims gathered before its golden gates, slaughtering ninety people. Although the Taliban were on the run, many other jihadi outfits roamed freely. The ISI’s double games continued. The United States also bore a measure of responsibility for Pakistan’s chaos. The CIA drone campaign in the tribal belt wiped out the top tier of al Qaeda militants, but it also killed hundreds of civilians. The lengthy, inconclusive American intervention in Afghanistan had badly destabilised Pakistan by creating fertile ground for its jihadi groups. No firm evidence was produced, in Washington or elsewhere, to prove accusations that the Pakistanis had been sheltering Osama