Is Pakistan a Weimar Republic?
Germany and Pakistan may be apples and oranges, but the point is that the current artistic and creative ferment in Pakistan is not sustainable, just as the Weimar Republic fell to fascism.
Omar Ali asks what an oppressive ideological takeover in Pakistan might look like. “In Germany and Italy it was German and Italian nationalism, but Pakistani nationalism minus Islam is still too incoherent to be useful for this purpose (which is why the small sliver of educated westernized paknationalists who flock around army websites are so ineffectual and confused). But the critical missing component is not ideology (which can be created from very thin gruel if needed), the critical missing component is capacity; the army cannot even control its own agents in the tribal areas and South Punjab.”
