World | Pakistan
Sense of foreboding hangs over the country
Euphoria over Musharraf's resignation has ended as residents fear growing instability.
- By Laura King, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
- Published: 23:12 August 25, 2008
Islamabad: The honeymoon didn't last long.
For Rashid Shahbaz, a rail-thin day labourer, the surge of happiness he felt over President Pervez Musharraf's resignation last week leached away all too swiftly, replaced by the same sense of anxiety that has tugged at him for months.
"How can I feed my family? How can I give my children a future?" he said, falling into step with other worshippers heading to noon prayers at a run-down neighbourhood mosque in the capital.
Lightning-fast changes
"That's what I am asking God every day. Every single day," he said.
Pakistan, with its propensity for lightning-fast changes in the national mood, has swung in recent days from euphoria over Musharraf's long-awaited exit to deep foreboding over whether its remaining leaders are up to the tasks of pulling the country out of an economic free fall and confronting a burgeoning Islamist insurgency.
Early signs
Early signs were not auspicious. The coalition government, paralysed for months by infighting, fell to quarrelling again within hours of Musharraf's resignation, and the alliance of the two main parties could unravel altogether in coming days.
Only three days after the sudden exit of Musharraf, who was military chief for most of his nearly nine years in power, Pakistan's Taliban movement struck one its most powerful blows yet at the military establishment, staging a spectacular attack on a huge munitions compound outside the capital. Nearly 80 workers from the weapons complex, almost all of them civilians, were killed in suicide blasts carefully timed to coincide with shift changes at the plant.
Suicide bombings
Moreover, the Taliban threatened to reignite a campaign of suicide bombings that plagued urban areas across Pakistan last year, killing and maiming hundreds. In cities such as Lahore and Karachi, sites of suicide bombings have become local landmarks.
Economic indicators have marched steadily downward. With inflation running at 25 per cent annually, prices for staples such as rice and bread have doubled or tripled in recent months.
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