and that's the real problem.

The top 2% of the nation's hereditary elite do exactly as they please. Members of the feudal aristocracy, especially in rural areas, have their own prisons, and some have their own militias. The crimes they commit against their serfs are horrific, commonplace, and none of these poverty striken people ever see justice. In the cities, you can substitute the Anglicized industrialists for the feudal lords. The situation in Pakistan is Dickensian in the scope of its tragedy.

In India after independence, some of this changed. In Pakistan it never did. The rich commit all the adultery they want--no charge of zeena is ever brought. They rape little girls in brothels set up in their own neighborhoods; nothing is done about it. They drink imported whiskey until they are falling down drunk--none for the common man, and you get 100 lashes if you get caught buying it from an illegal still on the sly. Drug use--no problem for the elite, death penalty for the poor. The wealthy own the police. They own the courts, almost entirely. In the daily newspaper, Dawn, it was reported a few weeks ago that a young heir, an eldest son, in the upscale suburb of Gulberg in Lahore shot and killed two servants as well as his aunt and grandmother. The paper said--I kid you not-- "no arrest has been made, as the family is meeting to decide how to handle the matter themselves". Uh....whaaaaa? Yet it's true, that's how it is.

The other 98% of the country, the majority of whom are illiterate (and almost all the women are), are subject not only to Sharia (courtesy a dictator, Zia) but various politically repressive laws. Naturally this inequity does not sit well with them. The country is ripe for revolution, and thirty years ago it may well have been a Communist revolution (remember what the Bhuttos originally stood for). Now thanks to various factors including U.S. interference it looks like it will be a Deobandi Islamic revolution, something that will have serious negative effects for the whole fabric of the country and everything that is good and pleasant about it. But it's coming, make no mistake about that.

Look at what the niqabi sisters are doing and you will see this. They aren't going into the poor areas and harrassing the labourers but straight into the posh suburbs of Islamabad and raiding Chinese brothels patronized by the top brass. Can you really not see why they are heroines to so many working class people? Come on, they had the corrupt fat cats by the hair there for a bit, and it almost looked like they might succeed in making them accountable.

There is presently a lot of hand wringing in certain neighborhoods about how now everyone has to live in a compound behind high walls, with armed chowkidars and unbreakable locks on everything because of dacoity and fundamentalism....the rich have now literally imprisoned themselves in their own country...but they don't see the social problems that are causing this. It's amazing.

Addressing social injustice must be the absolute number one priority for the country's leadership. Chaudry (Chief Justice) although from the upper class himself appears to see this. That's also why he's so popular.

Anyway, its easy for me to understand why these girls are doing this, as others pointed out they are from poor backgrounds, often from the countryside and they have no other education---but you have to see the other side of it as well.

As with everything else, follow the money.

The girls don't want Sharia for themselves--they already live under Sharia as per the Hudood Ordinances. They just want to see Sharia (which is already the law, sitting in a rather odd fashion side by side with a *thoroughly broken* civil, secular justice system) applied to everyone in the country, especially the Westernized elite, whom they hate. That's all.

the answer of course, is neither, there should be freedom AND rule of law for everybody. But that's not coming to Pakistan in the near future, unless they do a Nepal and oust the entire system overnight somehow. But I don't see that happening anytime soon (what with the military running the country and all). Looks like some people are sick of it and wish to take matters into their hands. Continuing abuse of untrammeled power by the elites will only serve to hasten their own demise. Will they realize this in time? Sit back, folks, it promises to be an entertaining show.