Democracy

Imran Khan came to power touting that he was on the same page as the military. And he has ended on a stunning anti-establishment note in a way that no Pakistani politician has done before. [Still, it would be unfair to blame Mr. Musharraf for all of Pakistan’s problems, or even for the military’s continued hold on power. Those, are rooted in pathologies that go back to the country’s split with India in 1947.] It traces back to two pillars — reliance on Islam and opposition to India — that all of the country’s leaders have tried to follow. Musharraf wasn’t responsible for that — he was a product of it.

The TPP [Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan] threat to Pakistan is significant, and it is growing. The TTP have been emboldened by a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and the Pakistani state's shaky, uncertain approach to the group in recent years. Pakistan has tried negotiating with the group many times over the years; negotiations always fail because the group is existentially opposed to the Pakistani state and constitution. The only option the state has is to launch an extensive military operation against the group, as it did in 2014, but that is complicated this time around by the fact that the TTP can cross the border into Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, leaving Pakistan with a growing, and hard-to-control terrorism problem on its hands.