The Economist October 9th 2021 53
AsiaPakistanandtheworldNow what?
U
ntil2013 Salma Tanveer ran a private
school in a suburb of Lahore, Paki-
stan’s second biggest city. She and her hus-
band, a civil engineer, were pious Muslims
who had travelled to Mecca six times. Then
things went wrong. The preacher in a local
mosque accused her of blasphemy, claim-
ing she had suggested that Muhammad
might not have been the last prophet. On
September 27th a lower court in the city
pronounced its verdict. Ms Tanveer is to be
fined 50,000 rupees ($290), and also
“hanged by her neck until death”.
That may never happen. So far no one
sentenced to death for blasphemy in Paki-
stan has actually been executed—although
of the nearly 2,000 people charged with the
crime since the law was made more fero-
cious in the 1980s, 128 have been killed by
angry mobs. In Ms Tanveer’s case it is the
supposed experts who have run amok: in
2014 a panel of psychiatrists had declared
her mentally ill and so unfit for trial, only
to change its mind five years later.
Ms Tanveer’s situation is extreme, yet
her predicament is in some ways a reflec-
tion of the peculiar, precarious balancethat Pakistan itself has long sustained. In
one avatar it is a nuclear-armed modern
state that can hold elections, rely on scien-
tific advice from highly qualified profes-
sionals and run courts where simple de-
cency sometimes prevails. Yet its other
face is a country of cruel and primitive
laws, ill-educated mobs and people in
power who are happy to make use of both.
Pakistanis are skilled at smoothing over
such tensions, or simply ignoring them,
but at crucial moments it is hard to do ei-
ther. The dramatic return to power of the
Taliban in Afghanistan, which shares a
2,640km-long border with Pakistan, has
been one of those moments. Since the ig-
nominious collapse of Afghanistan’s West-
ern-backed regime last month, after an ex-
pensive and violent 20-year experiment indemocratisation, Pakistan has oscillated
uncomfortably between relief and anxiety.
Pakistan’s powerful deep state has for de-
cades quietly backed the Taliban. Now, as
the group’s closest friend and main con-
duit to the outside world, Pakistan bears a
big responsibility for Afghanistan’s fate.
Yet it is far from clear whether the tactical
advantage won by chasing other players
out will translate into longer term gains—
boosting Pakistan’s diplomatic weight and
opening opportunities for commerce—or
whether this unsteady country of 220m
will be sucked into yet more Afghan tur-
moil, this time with no one else to blame.
Many in Pakistan—55% according to a
recent Gallup poll—are pleased to have the
Taliban ruling next door again, and de-
lighted to see a bunch of sandal-clad Mus-
lim peasants humiliate an infidel horde
equipped with drones and satellites. “It is a
great achievement,” crows Zainullah
Achakzai, a soft-drink vendor in the border
town of Chaman, midway between Quetta
in Pakistan and Kandahar in Afghanistan.
Other Pakistanis see the end of the
Western-sponsored regime in Kabul as an
ominous warning. They fear the return of
old disorders associated with Afghanistan,
such as jihadist terror, an influx of desti-
tute refugees and ostracism by other coun-
tries. Already radical Islamists have raised
the Taliban flag over mosques in Islam-
abad, the Pakistani capital, and attacks by
Muslim radicals within Pakistan have
ticked up again after several years of de-
cline. According to the South Asia Terro-D ELHI AND ISLAMABAD
Pakistan wanted the Taliban to prevail. But the militants’ victory may exacerbate
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