Pakistani Politics

Pakistan is a country of 170 million, of which 20 million live in the major city, Karachi, and most of the rest live on the land. The land is watered by the Indus river and has been productive farmland since the prehistoric Indus valley civilizations. The bulk of the land is owned by a few wealthy aristocratic landlords, the great mass of the people work for landlords. Only the landlords are wealthy enough and educated enough to stand for election to parliament. The mass of the farm workers are uneducated, lack newspapers, radio, and TV. Uneducated and poorly informed they may be, but they are not stupid. They know it's a good idea to vote for their landlord lest something bad happen to them. This makes the elected Pakistani government into a government of landlords, who tend to be more interested in preserving their social and economic position than anything else.
In the normal course of events, an elected Pakistani government will slip into corrupt practices that would make the worst of US politicians look like boy scouts. Things will deteriorate until finally, despairing of reform, the Pakistani Army will depose the civilian government and take matters into it's own hands. The Army is widely respected in Pakistan, so that military rule is seen as a good thing, a needed house cleaning. The incoming military regime will make some reforms, and for a while things will seem good. After the passage of some years, the new wears off and a new civilian government is set up, the Army goes back to the barracks and life goes on. Pakistan has gone thru this cycle repeatedly since the country was created in 1947.
Today could become just another turning point away from a military regime back toward a civilian one. If it were not for the growth of extreme Islamic parties in Pakistan, we could distance ourselves from the turmoil and come to terms with the new government whenever it establishes itself. Unfortunately, the true strength of the Islamic extremists is not well known. Saudi financed madrassas educate a huge percentage of Pakistani youth in the Wahabi sect of Islam, which is a bad sign.