The President

There is something entirely unreal about the Pakistani President travelling around Europe mostly on a private visit, with an official meeting here and an official dinner there, when his country struggles with its greatest environmental disaster for eighty years. This tells us something, although I am not sure what.

What it may tell us is that it does not matter where he is, because he no longer counts as a power in his country. In the past this would have signalled a coup in preparation. We shall have to see. Meanwhile it is another element of uncertainty in toxic mix in which we are, to such folly, militarily engaged in the region. Taken in the round the situation in Pakistan, the border region and Afghanistan is a lot less stable and the future a good deal less certain than when we plunged in nine years ago. However it is finally brought to some kind of stability, it will not be by the route we think.