Pakistan Has Never Been Governed for Pakistanis

The British left in 1947, but the machinery they built to control the population survived inside a military state that protects its rulers and abandons the public.

Pakistan wakes each morning to a state that knows exactly where its citizens live when taxes are due, when an electricity bill must be recovered, when a protest must be stopped, when a journalist has crossed an invisible line or when another son from a poor district is needed for a war, and yet the same state becomes confused when a child needs a classr…