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/ 14 October 2011
This week’s violence in Cairo marks an ominous development in the story of Egypt’s unfinished revolution.
<em>William Dalrymple</em> recalls a festival in India where Hindus celebrate a Muslim warrior.
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/ 7 September 2007
Benazir Bhutto has been doing the rounds of the television studios announcing her imminent return to Pakistan. Representing herself as the face of Pakistani liberal democracy, she has had an astonishingly smooth ride from interviewers, few of whom seemed to be aware of her deeply flawed record, writes William Dalrymple.
A mid all the hoopla surrounding the 60th anniversary of Indian independence, almost nothing has been heard from Pakistan, which also turned 60 recently. Nothing, that is, if you discount the low rumble of suicide bombings, the noise of automatic weapons storming the Red Mosque and the creak of slowly collapsing dictatorships.
"Before the Afghan war there was nothing like this. It only began when [Ronald] Reagan and the Saudis starting sending jihadis to Peshawar. Before that the Pushtuns loved Sufism." The US and Britain are straining to shore up a hated autocracy, argues author William Dalrymple.