WEST ASIA’s dependence on oil has kept the region economically underdeveloped. I don’t use the word “underdeveloped” to mean low levels of income. As we have already seen, the region’s average per capita income places it squarely in the middle-income world. I use it to mean the absence of diversification. Let me mention two sets of numbers to illustrate this point.

Let us take a look at the region’s exports. Manufactures account for nearly 80 per cent of total international trade. For middle-income countries, the proportion of manufactures is a bit lower — 66 per cent. However, for West Asia the proportion is only a third. That is not surprising since for a number of these countries, oil constitutes such a major export.

Only in three West Asian countries — Pakistan, Tunisia and Turkey — manufactures account for close to 80 per cent of total exports. However, even for these countries manufactured exports have a very low level of technological content. For more than a decade, international trade has been propelled at a rate of increase three to four times the rate of growth of world product. This happened because of the sharp increase in the trade of high-tech products. West Asia has not participated in this boom at all.

Let us get back to the subject of oil. It is not only the recently committed acts of terrorism that have brought the spotlight to shine on West Asia. The spotlight also shines because of the western world’s dependence on oil. However, oil is not necessarily a great asset for West Asia. To explain why I consider oil a liability in the present circumstances, let me take a bit of a detour and talk about the fundamental restructuring of the global economy that is occurring right at this very moment.

Some economic historians — and I count myself among them — have looked at the shape of the global economy at any given point in time as a consequence of what is called the “game of catch-up.” We have seen three phases of catch-up over the last century and a quarter. In the first of these, some one hundred years ago, the United States first caught up and then overtook Britain as the leading global economy. Some fifty years ago, Japan caught up with America and Europe. In the third phase, that began about a quarter century ago, the East Asian tigers began to catch up with the world’s rich countries.

Now, I believe, another catch-up period has begun in which the large economies of the Asian landmass — China certainly, India possibly, and with luck also Iran, Pakistan, Russia and Turkey — may begin to close the gap. This gap will be closed not in terms of per capita income of the citizens of these countries — as happened with America, Japan and the Asian tigers — but in terms of the size of their economies.

No country illustrates this point better than China. In terms of purchasing power parity, China even today is the world’s second largest economy with a gross domestic product of over $5 trillion. This makes the Chinese economy half the size of the US which, at $10 trillion, accounts for 22 per cent of the world output of $45 trillion. Over the next 25 years, the size of the world economy will more than double to $100 trillion by 2025. The US economy will increase to $20 trillion but the Chinese economy will overtake it and, by then, have a product of $23 to $25 trillion. India and conceivably also Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and Turkey will also grow at rates twice as large as the rate of growth of world output.

By 2025, these six Asian economies — China, India, Iran, Russia, Pakistan and Turkey — may account for nearly one-half of the world output. Today, the rich countries of America and Europe account for just over 40 per cent of global product. In other words, in the next 25 years we may see a shift in the centre of gravity of the global economy in a way without a precedence. The center of gravity may lie squarely in the centre of the Asian landmass.

That shift will be unprecedented for the simple reason that the leading economies of 2025 will not be rich in terms of the average income of their citizens. They will just be large. And in that important fact lies the source of future conflicts. The present war in Afghanistan may be the first manifestation of this coming conflict. Let me explain.

Some readers will recall the statement by Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank, that the world product was becoming lighter. By this he meant that knowledge, which is weightless, was becoming a more important input for world product than material inputs such as steel, copper, aluminum, tin, wood and oil. For the poor countries, however, the population will continue to demand goods that are still heavy with material inputs. That is why I believe that the competition for such resources as oil will become intense as the populous countries of Asia grow into sizable economies.

That the excessive dependence of the world on oil has already become an albatross round the neck of West Asia can be seen from the game being played under the surface during the present war in Afghanistan. Over the last couple of weeks, we have seen reports in the newspapers about the movement of a large number of Russians to Kabul. It is incredible that Moscow is about to achieve with American help what it failed to do twenty years ago — bring Afghanistan into its sphere of influence. If that happens — and there is a fair chance that it might — Russia would have encircled the oil-rich countries around the Caspian Sea. This will make China and America very uncomfortable. America may well respond by tightening its grip on the Arabian Peninsula. Russia and China — perhaps joined by India — will compete for the oil resource of Central Asia. This conflict among the world’s large economies will be the new “Great Game” in West Asia. The war in Afghanistan is the first innings of this game.

To counter these pressures, the West Asian countries must become strong. West Asia has three assets on which it could build a robust society. When I speak of society, I mean the economy, the polity and the social structure. Two of these assets I have already mentioned — a very young population and a large, still fully untapped, reserve of oil and gas. Let me now turn to the third asset — the West Asian diasporas in Europe and North America.

Over the last several decades — during the colonial as well as the post-colonial periods — there has been a steady stream of migration from West Asia to various developed countries. By now there are large West Asian expatriate communities all over the developed world — Turks in Germany; Moroccans and Algerians in France; Egyptians in Italy, Germany and Britain; Pakistanis in Britain and all of these nationalities in America. It is my guess — I should say a reasonably informed guess — that some 12 to 15 million people from West Asia are now living and working in North America and Europe.

There have been two steams of migrants from West Asia to the developed world. The first stream was made up of people with low levels of skills who went to man the factories and construction sites of Europe when it was recovering from the ravages of the Second World War. The most significant example of this type of migration is the flow of Turks to Germany.

The second stream of migrants moved because they possessed highly developed skills that were in short supply in the West. The best example of this is the migration of Pakistani IT professionals to the United States, Canada, and Britain.

If these two groups of migrants have an average income equivalent to twothirds the average in Europe and equal to the average in the US, simple arithmetic suggests that the combined income of the West Asian diasporas is of the order of $300 billion, more than one-third the combined GDP of the region.

These numbers could be put in a different way. The average per capita income of a West Asian migrant living in America or Europe is $25,000, seven times the income of the people these migrants have left behind. This is a tremendous resource waiting to be tapped. To do it will need at least three things:

One, it will require a move towards a political system that has the confidence of the expatriate community and that would mean open and representative systems. For the moment only one country — Turkey — has such a system.

Two, it will need the governments in the region to undertake to broaden the economic base. In moving towards greater diversification, these countries should take advantage of their young populations. Knowledge-intensive sectors such as IT and health sciences could be developed by providing the young with the education, training and skill development that they will need. A beginning has been made in this direction in countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan. The pace of development could be accelerated to match those achieved by countries such as India, Ireland and Israel.

Three, it would be helpful if there is greater regional cooperation among the 25 countries of the region. If that were to happen, West Asia, in terms of population, will have a market more than two and a half times the size of the United States and twice the size of the European Union.

With developments such as these in place, I am confident that the first reaction will come from the West Asian diasporas who will begin to bring their skills and capital to their homelands. This will not be the first time that the diasporas would have played such a role — it was done by the Jews in the United States for Israel, by the expatriate Chinese for China, and is being currently done by the expatriate Indians for India. The West Asians could easily follow these examples.

Once the diaspora communities open the way, foreign investors will follow. Again, that is exactly what happened in the case of China. Today, the most important aspect of what is often called “globalization” is the flow of investment capital from developed to developing countries. Some 60,000 foreign corporations are taking part in cross-border capital flows. Foreign direct investment by transnational corporations now amounts to $250 billion a year. The stock of foreign investment in the developing world now exceeds $2 trillion.

Insofar as West Asia is concerned, this vital source of investment has gone mostly to the oil and gas sector. I am confident that it will be available for other industries and activities if the region adopts the approach advocated above.

It appears that the West Asian region stands on the threshold of a major change in its fortunes. This change could be negative and devastating if the region allows the type of forces that produced the terrorist attacks on America to germinate and blossom. The region could also become the ground on which large world economies — USA, Europe, China, India, and Russia — will compete for an increasingly scarce resource — oil and gas. The region should not support another “Great Game.”

Or, conversely, the region could take the approach towards modernity. That would involve the modernization of all aspects of life in the region: political, social and economic. That could happen. It should happen. The choice is with the people of the region.

[This is the second part of Shahid Javed Burki’s article on the economic future of Muslim West Asia. The first part appeared in yesterday’s issue.]

THERE may not be a positive response from the Indian side to the suggestion made by the Pakistan high commissioner in New Delhi for the resumption of bilateral contacts between President Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee during the SAARC summit in Kathmandu scheduled to be held next month.

The suggestion for the top-level India-Pakistan talks in Kathmandu was contained in an article by the Pakistan high commissioner to the Times of India. He urged the Indian prime minister to ignore “a welter of hawkish ideas” seeking what was seen as a complete suspension of bilateral talks with Pakistan.

Almost every important leader from the US and the European countries who has visited New Delhi and Islamabad in the recent weeks also called upon the leaders of the two South Asian countries to resume the peace process. However, the closest that Prime Minister Vajpayee came to expressing a positive response has been his recent observation that if there is a SAARC summit and if he goes to Kathmandu to attend it and if he meets the Pakistan president he would see what could be done to reactivate the peace moves.

However, whether this happens or not, Pakistan has to reckon with the fact that the US-led operation in Afghanistan has brought about a substantial qualitative change in the geostrategic environment of the subcontinent. It will be a very different India with which Islamabad will now have to deal.

The stream of the strategists and “area specialists” from all us and the West visiting New Delhi have succeeded in creating a strong interaction between the US and India. The Indian leadership appears to be exultant at the outcome. Gone are the days when Indian strategists could claim (as they did in the early years of the cold war) that India’s “strategic posture was based on peace and pacific settlement of disputes and not on deterrence through military preparedness.” High-level delegations of military and defence planners from the US and its allies have changed India’s orientation.

Indian news-weekly India Today has claimed that the Bush administration has in mind a full-fledged blueprint “which envisages a central role for India as a counter-weight to China on the one hand, and the fragile Islamic states of West Asia on the other.” The journal also believes that in return for what India would offer, it could inter alia expect support from Washington for a seat in the UN security council and a US “tilt” favouring India on the Kashmir issue, apart from large US investments in defence infrastructure.

Most policy makers from the US and other western countries have stressed the need for India and Pakistan to resume their dialogue for resolving their disputes, especially Kashmir. Indian hawks, such as home minister Lal Krishna Advani and defence minister George Fernandes, have even protested that accepting the US blueprint would “be construed as a sign of Indian weakness,” and that Washington was treating India and Pakistan at par and not being sufficiently attentive to India’s concerns over cross-border terrorism.

Pakistan can expect that while expanding its strategic relationship with India, the US will also urge India to move towards having a stable and peaceful relationship with Pakistan and remove the prevailing tensions in the subcontinent.

Mercifully, nothing has happened so far to suggest that the warming of the US’s relations with India have been at the cost of its relationship with Pakistan. The US at various levels has acknowledged the support given by Pakistan in the international campaign against terrorism.

It is important that if Pakistan expects India to have a little more understanding of the pressures faced by it by the withdrawal of its support to the Taliban, Pakistan too should show a spirit of accommodation towards the crises confronting the Vajpayee government. The coming few months could indeed be crucial to the very survival of Mr Vajpayee’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

After having lost five states to the opposition in recent times, Mr Vajpayee is faced with a challenge in India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh (UP). The BJP and the NDA have been in power in the UP for some time but the outlook is not too promising for them in the context of the next elections which are due to be held in March. Many political observers in India believe that the support for the BJP and its allies has of later been critically eroded, particularly where the UP is concerned.

The Opposition, led by the Samajwadi Party and the Congress, apparently pose a strong challenge to the BJP. They may particularly want to exploit to their advantage two major issues which have come to the fore in the UP and could upset the BJP’s applecart.

The issues are the pressure from the militant Hindu elements, some of whom are Mr Vajpayee’s allies in the NDA, for the construction of Ram Mandir at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, and, two, the reinduction of Mr George Fernandes as the defence minister in the cabinet.

Despite all the faults he has, Mr Vajpayee is still the only political leader in India who can gather enough support to be able talk to Pakistan on the basis of give-and-take. He had the will and the confidence to undertake the bus journey to Lahore and, more recently, invite the President of Pakistan for the bilateral talks in Agra. The destabilization of Mr Vajpayee’s government, however attractive it may appear to be to Pakistanis in view of his pro-Hindutva ideology, thus would not be in Pakistan’s interest.

“ALL right, class, today we’re going to discuss the economic factors that make a society work. To make it easier, the children whose parents have jobs sit on this side of the room — and those whose mothers and fathers don’t have jobs, sit on that side.

“Now, in order to have a successful economy, you have to have money. Most people earn their money by having a job. You get paid by the company for services rendered, such as working for a telephone company, or being a computer programmer. Now, as soon as Alfred Sidewinder is paid, he gives the money to someone else, like a department store or the grocer, usually with a credit card.

“The department store or the grocer then takes Alfred’s money and puts it in the bank to pay off its own debts. The bank, in turn, lends the money to Howard Simpan, who wants to buy a house, and to Frederick Lipscomb, who wants to open a pizza parlour. In a good economy, everybody is handing each other’s money, and everyone is happy. Some invest money in stocks, and these companies then spread the wealth because everyone believes the market will always go up.

“That’s the good side. The bad side is, if Alfred Sidewinder, at the beginning of the merry-go-round, doesn’t spend any money. Then we have a recession.”

One of the children on the side of the unemployed parents says, “My father doesn’t have any money. He lost his job making office file cabinets.” Another one yells, “My father lost his job as an airline pilot.” A third one chimes in, “My father has no work because his greeting card company printed all their cards in Indonesia.”

A child on the side of the room whose parents are still working says, “My father won’t let my mother spend any money. He says you never know when you will no longer have a job.”

“If the economy gets better, will the people get their jobs back?” a child asks.

“That’s an interesting question. The only way to get out of a recession is to have the people working again. Many companies are laying off workers because they say they aren’t making any money. They did this before Sept. 11, and have no intention of hiring them back because they realized how much they would save if they had half their employees.”

“What’s the answer?”

“President Bush thinks a tax cut for large companies should do the job.”

“What about Christmas?” someone asks.

“That’s a good point. It could be a good year or a bad year, depending on Sidewinder. The ball is in his court now. It would be nice if the children on the unemployed side of the room could soon be sitting on the other side. But it will happen only after the economy hits bottom. Are there any questions?” —Dawn/Tribune Media Services

THE Jamaat-i-Islami, the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Islam, the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Pakistan and the militant mujahid groups were all assiduous in reminding General Pervez Musharraf of his “Islamic duty” towards the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, even at the cost of causing incalculable harm to their own country.

But none of them gives a thought to what Osama’s own duty should have been towards poor hapless Afghanistan which gave him shelter and respect and the status of a monarch-in-residence.

There was one thing about the Taliban that the West, and particularly the United States, was not able to comprehend. It was their insistence on protecting Osama under the tradition of hospitality, at the cost of war on their land, overthrow of their government, devastation of Afghanistan, decimation of the country’s infrastructure, deaths of thousands of innocent citizens through air raids, and other calamities.

Similarly, Europe, and particularly the United States again, has not been able to understand the thinking of John Philip Walker, a 22-year old American (now a Muslim renamed as Abdul Hameed) who was one of the survivors of the Qila Jangi massacre by the Northern Alliance. What they can’t conceive is why Walker should be so enamoured of his adopted faith that he was ready to forsake the comfort and luxury and privilege of being a white US citizen, and undergo instead the suffering and privations of a primitive country’s soldier.

It is all a matter of moral and spiritual duty. The Taliban considered it their Islamic duty to harbour and protect Osama; the religious circles in Pakistan thought it was Pervez Musharraf’s duty to go on siding with the Taliban even his own country was threatened; Pervez Musharraf believed his primary duty was not to allow Pakistan to be endangered by the war in its neighbourhood; Walker alias Abdul Hameed was convinced that his conversion enjoined the duty on him to save Islam from other Afghan Muslims, although he could have gone for the same purpose to Palestine where Islam was being badgered by non-Muslims and where his presence would have drawn greater media attention.

In all this cycle of duty and responsibility only Osama bin Laden did not feel any moral or spiritual obligation towards his naive and misguided hosts who were somehow brought around by him into believing that real jihad lay in the destruction of US installations and US lives through acts of terrorism. If Osama felt like an Islamic crusader for the sake of the Middle East, and if he thought he would be too vulnerable in Palestine if he lived there, why didn’t he choose Iraq as his base of operations since that country was already hostile towards the United States and had suffered at its hands? Why inflict himself on the poor Afghans? Simply because where there was talk of saving Islam they were the most gullible?

There can be only one reason. Previously Osama had lived for some years in Sudan but when things got too hot for him there his eye fell on Afghanistan. He had to protect himself from those who were out to catch him and what better place could there be than that benighted country, already ravaged by the Soviets, the Mujahideen and civil war and offering a limitless variety of landscape to hide. It did not matter how his hosts would suffer because of his presence. He was too precious in his own estimation to risk his life, even for Islam, or sacrifice himself by becoming an easy target.

By the way, one would like to ask the religious political parties of Pakistan what was the jihad that Osama and the Taliban were conducting, and against whom, before the fateful September 11. The only “kafir” enemy that one saw was a horde composed of Afghans who happened to be tribally and racially different from the Pukhtoon Taliban but were as Muslim as themselves, only less-bigoted and less addicted to making Islam difficult for its adherents. Remember the injunction to Muslims, “Don’t make faith a burden for the people,” or words to that effect?

I am sorry I have not been able to see anything jihad-like in what was going on in Afghanistan before the US jumped into the business and declared a war against that country’s regime. It was simply an internecine war for power and authority in which Pakistan, for political reasons, with nothing as noble as Islamic about them, had the misfortune to put its shirt on the Taliban horse, and ultimately lost the bet.

Long before the mind-boggling attacks on New York and Washington America had expressed its determination to get hold of Osama. September 11 just put a match to that keg of dynamite, that resolve. He had plenty of time to make alternate plans for himself. An aura of invincibility has been built up around him by us Muslims, an almost superhuman aura. If he was so magnificently adorned with electronic arms and equipment as he is made out to be, he could easily have disappeared from Afghanistan and landed somewhere else. For example, in Chechnya where Muslims were really fighting non-Muslims and where his jihad would have had some meaning.

If he felt even moderately for the Afghans for the Taliban, for innocent citizens, for the women and children of his hosts, who, because of him, were torn to pieces by American cluster bombs and other weapons of mass destruction, he could have offered himself for trial or whatever fate the US had in store for him. I would say that to save Afghanistan from the untold misery that it was subjected to by his adamantine zeal, he should even have preferred his own death to that of his protectors and admirers. If he was so noble, so brave, such a pious Muslim, such a committed mujahid, he shouldn’t have thought for a moment while deciding to give up his life for them.

But no, he had to do what he did and, in the process, all but destroyed Afghanistan. So much for his sense of moral and spiritual duty.

THE suicide bombings in Israel and their harsh aftermath may have won Saddam Hussein a breathing space. With the endgame being played out in Afghanistan, there have been several indications that the United States is keen to pick a new venue for its favourite form of fireworks.

The difficulties involved in justifying an all-out assault against Iraq as part of the so-called war against terrorism are not insurmountable, if only because the US does not expect anyone to contradict its arguments, no matter how convoluted they may be. It was ever thus, but the tendency has acquired alarming proportions in the wake of September 11.

It is possible, of course, that for several months Iraq would anyway have been subjected to nothing deadlier than belligerent rhetoric from the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush. But if there were any plans to follow up one ill-advised adventure almost immediately with another, they may have to be put off as Washington9s closest ally in the Middle East pursues a mindless vendetta of its own.

There can be little question that the targeting of Israeli civilians by Hamas suicide bombers deserves unequivocal condemnation. These may be acts of desperation, but they are also acts of blind hatred and serve to perpetuate a cycle of bloodshed. Their retaliatory aspect cannot serve as justification for murder. It hardly needs to be pointed out that the same goes for Israeli military strikes, regardless of whether they are indiscriminate or aimed at individuals. In fact, it is not entirely surprising that there is a sort of synergy between fanatics on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, given that they have a mutual interest in scuttling the possibility of peaceful coexistence - as well as in making untenable the position of Yasser Arafat.

There are significant differences too. Zealots who are prepared to blow themselves up in the pursuit of what they may perceive to be a liberation struggle constitute a minority among Palestinians. The Israelis who react ruthlessly to each provocation by bombarding Palestinian areas are their nations elected representatives. There is thus a yawning gap between the respective levels of irresponsibility. On a broader level, about the only weapon the foot soldiers of the intifeda have access to is stones. The Israeli authorities are armed to the hilt with the latest weaponry, most of it acquired courtesy the US. This stupendous disparity apparently means little to Israel’s chief provider. President Bush is reported to have requested Prime Minister Ariel Sharon not to target Arafat directly, but beyond that, Western pressure following the latest confrontation has been aimed more or less exclusively at the Palestinian side. This is tantamount to echoing Sharons ridiculous stance that Arafat is in a position to halt all acts of anti-Israeli violence, should he so desire. Following the Oslo accords, Arafat has bent over backwards to accommodate Israeli and American concerns. However, he has stopped short of precipitating a civil war among Palestinians, as well as of squandering all his credibility. In the present context, it is also worth recalling that it was not Arafat but the Israeli intelligence service that sponsored Hamas as a counterweight to the secular Fatah movement.

It is hard to miss the parallel between this irony and the CIA’s role in bolstering Osama bin Laden. The fact remains that the chief obstacle to the resumption of meaningful negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis is not Arafat, nor even Hamas, but Sharon. Israeli voters have erred profoundly in electing a war criminal as their head of government under the false impression that he would at least be able to deliver security, if not peace. It may be some time before the majority of them realize that the only guarantee of security lies in a just settlement that includes the establishment of a viable and independent Palestinian state. A bunch of bantustans existing solely at Israel’s pleasure simply won’t do.

At the moment even that option isn’t on the table, while Mr Bush and Tony Blair appear to have suspended their post-September 11 strategy of advocating for a Palestinian state. To their slight discomfiture, Sharon had lost no time in leaping on to the “anti-terror” bandwagon; now he appears to be driving it. Israel may be the only Middle Eastern state with an elected government by western standards, but Sharon is hardly a great advertisement for democracy. Israelis do, of course, have the option of voting him out at the next available opportunity. Let’s hope it’s an option they will have the good sense to exercise — even though by then it will probably be too late to pretend that the peace process, for what it’s worth, can still be rescued.

Now to another strategy that has fallen by the wayside. When efforts to insinuate some nebulous link between Baghdad and Al Qaeda — based on nothing more substantial than an alleged meeting in Prague between an Iraqi diplomat and the reputed ring-leader of the September 11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta — faltered and the equally baseless suggestion that the Saddam regime was somehow responsible for a spate of anthrax-poisoned mail in the US also could not be sustained, the old weapons inspection ruse was dusted off for a replay. For want of anything more damning, it’ll probably be brought into service as the primary justification for an attempt to topple the government in Baghdad — once things cool down somewhat in the occupied territories, that is.

Although Sharon would probably like nothing better than an immediate allied military campaign in Iraq to distract international attention from his passion for atrocities, the US may just have the sense to realize that simultaneous wars against Iraqis and the Palestinians could completely alienate the Arab and Muslim worlds for decades to come. Of course, the campaign in Iraq will be hard to justify whenever it takes place — not least because it is bound to involve a great deal of gratuitous killing.

Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that its European allies will be able to dissuade the US from blundering into Babylon. It remains to be seen whether some sort of Kurdish force will be chosen for the role thrust upon the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. Such a step would not go down well with Turkey, a NATO member whose violently exclusionist stance towards the Kurds seldom invites the opprobrium it deserves from the West.

In the short run, Iraq appears destined for a fate worse than Saddam. Given his record, that’s saying a lot. But worse still, there are few grounds for faith in better days to come, even in the longer run. If brokering a deal for the control of Kabul was tough, a similar exercise vis-a-vis Baghdad will prove even harder.

Yet even Afghanistan, as things stand, offers little ground for complacency, let alone triumphant crowing. Amid disinformation about the scale of the carnage, emerging evidence of debilitating rifts within the Northern Alliance and little proof thus far that the interim Hamid Karzai administration forged in Bonn will be able to exercise its authority effectively, predictions of a rosy future are premature.

One must hope, of course, that peace and good governance can somehow be entrenched: few other nations deserve them as dearly as Afghanistan. But the havoc wreaked by the Anglo-American bombardment considerably complicates matters and, quite apart from the level of direct casualties, Afghans could be paying the price for generations to come in terms of the environmental damage their land has sustained.

Meanwhile, the fate of poor Robert Fisk suggests that Afghans are not quite embracing representatives of the West as their liberators. If beating him to within an inch of death was indeed an expression of anger, they couldn’t have chosen a worse target: not only has Mr Fisk vociferously opposed the war, he has for many years been a principled and articulate advocate of the Palestinian cause.

The journalist kept his wits about him even as he was fighting for his life, and later said that he understood perfectly well why he was targeted by the refugees near Quetta. But might he have been mistaken? Independent and fearless journalists who refuse to toe the official line do often make powerful enemies. Could someone have put his attackers up to it? The Baloch and federal authorities should thoroughly investigate the incident.