Hmm, well I cannot match your first hand experience, but the reason why Pakistan has never progressed seems pretty much related to the preference of the middle classes to keep the poor uneducated by denying them schools. For a people who are keen on education, that meant in the last 20-25 years that their only alternative was to send their children to the madrassas where an education of sorts was available.

Well, that worked well. An entire generation have been radicalised.

Yes, we in the west bear responsibilities. We sponsored Zia al-Huq and all of his similarly murderous military successors. Civilian government has only ever been treated as a figleaf interlude. We have always preferred a military dictator, not just in pakistan but it's so much easier to plunder a country if there is only one thug to bribe.

keep to the Fen Causeway