Right now so many things are happening around here .This attack on Afghanistan is unleashing all the dormant, and not so dormant forces of religious fanaticism, especially in the NWFP province.In the
thick mist of emotional outbursts, no one is noticing that the Durand Line between Afghanistan and Pakistan is getting more and more blurred by the day. .Someone will have to decide in the coming months
or years where Pakistan begins and Afghanistan ends, if it ends at all. Our fantastic theory of Afghanistan giving us "strategic depth" in the region is standing on it's head.

On the other hand millions of Pashtun refugees pressing against the Chaman border are laying the foundations of future bloodshed in Balochistan The dramatic changes in the ethnic complexion in this
province has been driving the Balochs towards Khuzdar and they could violently resent it in the future.as
the Sindhis resent the incursion of non Sindhis on their soil resulting from an earlier population
displacement in 1947 and thereafter.. This conflict at present has subsided but not without many years of bitter confrontation and, as it grew more complex and complicated, bloodshed and mayhem.

Right now the religious parties are demanding resignation from Parvez Musharraf. In their opinion Pakistan should follow the example of Iraq and servive as an outcast. state . They are dreaming of a
worldwide Muslim fraternity of funamentalist states adhering to the Wahabi tenets as practiced by the
House of Saud. This is not likely to happen unless the governments in all the 56 Muslim countries are
overthrown and Wahabi or quasi wahabi dispensations establish a Taliban like set-up in their countries, . However, this is what they intend to achieve. So all the temporal manifestations of Muslim civilization, its art and architecture, mausoleums and shrines, music and literature ,women's rights etc hang in the balance.

However, this is only one aspect of the present scenario. Underneath the religious and moralistic rhetoric , or perhaps parallel to it, is the striving of the powerful western world to appropriate the energy resources
of planet earth, much of which are located in the lands inhabited by other people and other races who are now, by some quirk of fate or history, Muslim. The Arab groups most wanted by the US avowedly espouse this cause and it strikes a responding chord in the hearts of the peoples of these lands. Perhaps unconsciously they feel that the war in Afghanistan is being fought by the US and its allies to ensure the unjustly low royalty rates for oil and gas in the year 2050

Intertwined with it are also the myopic manipulations of the western powers to prolong global supremacy, In very recent past it made them exploit Islamic fundamentalism to demolish a super power, and that
also made it expedient for the US to give an aid of 38 billion dollars to the Talibans a few months ago to create flashpoints in Chechenia, in Sinkiang in China and establish militant Sunni states around Shia Iran to teach it a lesson ( It is noteworthy that at that point in time, Osama bin Laden was ensconced in Afghanistan in the full knowledge of the western powers.)

In this maze, we have to decide which side we stand on and how this can be translated in practical terms. It has something to do with our being Muslim but a lot to do with purely secular concept of justice and even a just global market leading to giobal peace and development in the twenty first century..

(Fahmida Riaz, a well known Pakistani poet and a defender of women's rights & democratic politics)

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