I get so sick of these negative articles about Pakistan.

Having travelled around both countries, I can assure you that Pakistan is a vastly more developed and democratic country than India.

In India, hundreds of millions of people live under provincial governments which are led, quite literally, by murderers, thieves and extortionists. By some definitions of poverty, there are more people in poverty living in India than there are in sub-Saharan Africa. Why? Because the country is so badly run.

But go to Lahore or Islamabad, and you won't see children begging on the street, or roads clogged with motorised three-wheeled deathtraps - Pakistanis generally drive actual cars or motorbikes. You'll find beautiful, tarmacked freeways, unlike the cow-strewn tracks that connect major Indian cities. You'll find a large, Anglophone middle class and a boisterous free media. You'll find political parties which actually have a definable ideology beyond the corrupt enrichment of their members (though that's a big factor too).

Yet Western journalists insist on portraying Pakistan as hell on earth, and India as some sort of paradise. Very very weird.

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Pakistan is a vast country with the great majority of its population concentrated in the Indus valley. As Mr Preston quite rightly says there were and are good reasons why it should be able to develop peacefully and sucessfully. 

Any hope of that happening has been sacrificed to the folly of the war in a small and unimportant central Asian state.
 
FATA Chitral Swat and even the NWFP in general are relatively unimportant compared to Punjab and Sind, but the general peace of the Pakistanis is being sacrificed to the desire of the US and NATO to dominate events in these areas. No wonder the see the USA as their principle enemy and blame it for dsirupting what was until recently a quiet and stable country. 

They are the victims of "global" strategists who are so ignorant that they had to invent the term AfPak in their attempt to shoehorn two vastly different countries into one convenient package. 

Some people may say that this is anti-American, but it is not. My anger is not with the American people but with the fools that are running their foreign policy.
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No one is going to invade Pakistan, because they have the bomb. Not much oil either...................

Please could these reasons be spelled out properly. They surely cannot be just being large and with a populaton concentrated in a valley!

With these reasons not specified, we have no way of judging whether the reasons why these alleged good reasons don't operate are short-term matters of the last ten years related primarily to US policy.

It seems to me that Pakistan's serious problems are of very long standing, if not going back to its foundation (arguable) then certainly going back to Zia and his coup...which (before anyone starts boring on about US backing), occurred before the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, before US decision to involve itself seriously in that conflict via Pakistan, and to the considerable alarm of Western countries and disapproval of their media. Paranoia over India, the unhealthy role of the military and the social structure, Islamo-nationalism turning the educational system rotten, a situation in which the more sane voices are now isolated and even afraid of being lethally silenced. Even the fact that a majority are always so keen to blame all problems on someone else (used to be India, now US) is not a sign that this is true, but a gigantic problem in itself.
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Highly involved in Arab countries unrest situation.

Nothing to do with the desire of the people of those countries for democracy and freedom, then?

World should understand negative media against Pakistan is pure propaganda against innocent nation of Pakistan. This is similar kind of propaganda which GOEBBELS did against innocent jews and we saw 6 millions innocent killed.

Godwin Law violation with bells on.

If there are few extremist people in Pakistan let the nation sort them out. Those kind of people can be found in any country and Pakistan has never pointed out on them.

The Pakistani military fosters and promotes jihadism, so can hardly be expected to sort out the very many (not a few) extremists in Pakistan.
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an amazingly inaccurate and false narrative
pakistans problems are of its own making not the usa's

pakistan was never satisfied with what it got at partition as it believed not entirely correctly that the brits took india from muslim mughals so should leave it to muslim rule when they left, and to use this as basis for reuniting the ummah under pakistan's caliphate
to this end they have adopted a policy of blind hatred for india and basically want to destroy the indian state

kashmir n afghanistan are alibis for this conflict and not the cause
to this end pakistan adopted irregulars to supplement its conventional forces right from 47
it launched the mujahideen into afghanistan to subvert it long before the foolish soviet intervention in response to pakistani provocation
it then got aid from usa to build n expand manifold the mujahideen irregulars/terrorists
it developed nuclear weapons independently of india's programe and in response to the assymmetry and to provide protection to its export of terror
during the coldwar the usa often made good suggestions to pakistan to pursue export led growth and develop
pakistan rejected these suggestions always instead requesting the usa for aid vs india
the terrorists are pakistans irregular forces and part of its national security forces there is no extremist threat to pakistan, its already de facto ruled by them
pakistan successfully nuclear deterred india from 1990(gates mission) but to date indias nukes have failed to deter pakistan . so why is pakistan the fastest growing nuclear weapons power and becoming no4?
after demonstrated nuke deterrence (india has been unable to respond to paks export of terrorism or in 99 to widen conflict beyond kargil unlike in 65) theres no need for strategic depth
the need for strategic depth is so that pakistan can again shift terrorists to a taliban ruled afghanistan rather than be exposed and pressured by the world as the epicentre of terrorism and build plausible denialability
pakistan is completely opaque about its military budget
and then pak army has its additional income from legal business activities and from illegal drugs trade-heroin.
it suits the pak army to keep the country backward n underdeveloped and radicalised -though it may feel a temporary need to show its middle class some hope
there is no way that pak despite its resources n potential would have ever opted for rapid economic growth
if it wanted to it could earn billions a year from transit fees alone from 3rd country trade with india but has chosen not to.
so pakistans present predicament can in no way be attributed to the usa but is entirely of its own making
and it wouldnt have developed even if there had been no war on terror
truly as some have said, its an army in search of a country.
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Its [Pakistan's] sense of grievance may be unappealing. The preoccupation with India, the futile attachment to Kashmir, the hapless swings between corrupt democracy and army autocracy are all heavy burdens.

I think you left out quit a few things. How about its creation of the Taliban. Its propping up the Taliban while they were executing people for breaking sharia law, blowing up ancient buddhist statues, making Afghanistan an Islamic terrorist disneyland, all before 9/11, then perpetuating violence in Afghanistan that has killed thousands of Afghans and threatens hundreds of thousands more, and sheltered Bin Laden and other Al Queda leaders, just to name a few. Unless of course you dont consider such things unappealing. Call me crazy but I certainly do.

The current mess in Pakistan is all the result of these actions taken by the government, which really has no choice any more. Pakistan is a society that has been totally radicalized over the past several decades. The intentional actions of its government has created a monster it can no longer full control. Pakistan has done what no other country would do, give shelter and protection to Bin Laden following 9/11, which itself is an act of war on the United States.

Pakistan is not and has never been an ally of the US. It is a mortal enemy. For all his faults, Obama is a pretty reasonable man, but Pakistans actions have forced him to acknowledge what you Iraq obsessed Neo cons ignored for years, that Pakistan is the primary threat to the United States. It was all along. Not Afghanistan, not Iraq, or Yemen, or any one else.
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Pakistan's problems are much more complex and deep-seated than this rather superficial article presents them as, And we have had much better analysis of those problems and the likely future direction of Pakistan in the Observer on previous occasions.

This, from Jason Burke in August 2010, is a good starter for getting beyond the usual stereotypes, even if it is not especially reassuring.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/08/jason-burke-pakistan-changes
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They've got nukes and are surrounded by people who extremely radical and fundamentally opposed to everything we stand for in the West.

Why does everyone in the world have to support everything the west stand for? China has nukes and they have nothing in common with the west.
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Sensible journalism, predictably scoffed at by the usual armchair suspects, not many of whom I would guess has been to Pakistan or speaks the language. (I have, do).

The problem is almost the entire Western civilsation - not just Guardian readers - are dependent on the Western media for their opinion of Pakistan. No first-hand knowledge. That opinion has been formed and is continually re-inforced by negative images of the two extremes of Pakistani society - a Westernised elite and a radicalised Islamist fringe. Of course thats where the newsworthy stories are at. Ironicaly, both of those extremes owe large parts of thier existence to Western patronage.

Left to thier own devices, Pakistanis would be represented by the sort of people the vast majority there are - hard-working, working- class and middle-class Muslim democrats.

The root of it all is ignorance of the area, its people and its history, ignirance in the general public, the media, and the political classes/intelligentsia - as eloquently articulated by none other than General Stanley McChrystal.
But no arm-chair critic worth his(/her) salt will admit to ignorance.
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I am an Indian by Birth and a British national now. I didn't like Pakistan, like some of my friends as I was brought up to have these kind of senseless feelings against Pakistan as a default...........BUT....... I couldn't agree less to the author analysis...to the part that PAKISTAN is the BIGGEST looser in this so called WAR on terror.....and has been used as "a tool of convenience" by ALL including USA , UK and EUROPE as a matter of fact.... its a shame to see....as my unbiased analysis as a political post graduate student confirms ... PAKISTAN did its best to help the world and stood against ( most of the time) this wave of terrorism...... but its sad to see this country being used as a SCAPEGOAT for all failures of policies by all stake holders.....!!!!!!
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How many indian generations will it take to get ride of Cast System in India ?? What cast you are lower cast ,upper cast or no cast?? One of the indian wowen who used to work with me told me she is supirior in indians because she is Barhaman... For last 10 years indian Intelegence agency RAW has been funding terrisom in Paskistan through Aganistan its know fact....

Whilst I accept that the caste system is a problem in India, don't think for a minute it doesn't exist in Pakistan too.

The people of Pakistan and North India have much in common and that is one of them. A friend of mine is from the 'Gujjar' class and was considered unworthy of marrying a girl from a 'higher' caste.
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At last, an article that doesn't blame Pakistan for the murders of reformers, the persecution of Christians, the export of nuclear weapons to loony states like N. Korea, the deeply embedded corruption, tribalism and graft, the sharia courts that sentence girls to be raped and men to marry goats, the terror expeditions to Mumbai, the serial murders in Kashmir, the heroin trade...

And 10 full years after 9/11, it is the heaviest casualty of them all.

No, it's all America's fault. Pakistan would be lovely if it wasn't for those wicked yanks. Fuck me, Guardian, you get barmier by the day.....................

during the 10 years Pakistan has lost 35000 of its citizens due to the US/UK war in Afghanistan

during those 10 years it has sacrificed upto 10 000 of its military.

during those 10 years the US/UK war has cost Pakistan $70 billion. US aid has been $20 billion a net loss of $50 billion .

“The US has expected Pakistan to risk its own national security at the expense of US's. Pakistan has done this repeatedly. Allowing drone attacks, causing the deaths of thousands of innocent lives, and according to the Economic Times, suffered a loss of US$68 billion since becoming an ally to the US in the "war of terror". In return, Pakistan has received $15-17 billion, a figure which includes reimbursements of $8.2 billion through the Coalition Support Fund. These funds are not assistance but a payback of debts incurred according to the Economic Survey 2010-11. 

and yet the bigots and ignorant ask it to do more.........................

However, in all this period of being allies against "war on terror", not once has the US endangered its own national security or economy, for Pakistan.”..............you make it appear that only Pakistan has these kinds of issues. why so when you only have to look across to its neighbour or to the UK/US and a similar list could be produced.

Pakistan has caused its own economic misfortunes, no-one else.

silly.

They are definitely not our allies, not Britain's not America's.

and yet their sacrifice for our war has been greater than all of the western allies.

Pakistan has been a failed state since its inception. Its obsession with fostering Islamist aggression towards India has turned out to haunt Pakistan as the scorpions stung their breeders. The Pakistani police and secret services have always had close ties to Islamist groups. This is a country where millions celebrated when an anti-blasphemy campaigner was assassinated.

i suspect that youre more about a bias rather than objectivity.
it was not a failed state from its inception but it was truly a state that had to be built from ground zero from day zero. it did not have the advantages nor the finance institutions of india. just as it has issues with india , hindu india also has its obsession and aggression towards paksitan. it is hardly as simplistic a narrative as you propose.

Of course if you just ignore history and reality its clear Pakistan was the land of milk and honey before 9/11

in comparison to the present it was.

The ISI has clearly been playing both sides of the fence (to the extent that it has a centralised policy) with Osama Bin Laden laughably living 1/2 mile from a big army base. Does anyone seriously believe that the ISI, or elements therein, did not know this? The USA did not clear the operation with Pakistan because they knew full well that details would be leaked within five minutes.

the truth is that the same could be said of the CIA, MI6, RAW they all have their fingers in the dirty game.

do you really think if Pakistan had known of OBL it would have left him so exposed to such an operation, without some security provision. (that is if you believe the narrative of the operation).

The attitude to the doctor who helped to trace Bin Laden gives the game away - in any other country the man would be a hero, in Pakistan he may be tried for treason.

the attitude is not because of bin laden but the abuse of its sovereignty. the response in pakistan to bin ladens death (as usa narrative runs) was minimal however the fallout from the breach of its sovereignty was very big.

Pakistan is - and always was - a 'failing state' due to its foundation upon, and adherence to a repressive mediaeval belief system, culture and tradition.

this is the arrogance of ignorance, in not understanding the complexities of paksitan and how those complexities interact. pakistan has many layers , it is both conservative as well as progressive, it is liberal as well as authoritarian.

as for its islamic heritage, less than 4% voted for the islamist parties , the preference for the moderate mainstream .

Yet Western journalists insist on portraying Pakistan as hell on earth, and India as some sort of paradise. Very very weird.

not really in the context of the neo conservative war against islam.

The Taliban was the creation and is the creature of the ISI and the Pakistani military thought that the jihadis were a useful tiger to ride in their efforts against India. And we all know what happens when you ride a tiger ...

well the US had a finger in the pie too.

After 9/11 the USA could hardly have done nothing other than to ask the Taliban nicely if they wouldn't mind extraditing Bin Laden for criminal trial.

the taliban asked for evidence, the US didnt have any to offer. the taliban were willing to extradite bin laden to saudi.

What were you smoking on your travels?

states a person who has never set foot in the country.

No, killing terrorists and jihadis by drones is in the service of humanity.

hardly - only estimated 13 named terrorists killed out of 5000 casualties.
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"the sharia courts that sentence girls to be raped and men to marry goats,"

You are Stupid..

know your facts before you write: if Sharia law is that horriable then why 18 
"lawgivers" on wall above Supreme Court justices' bench in DC has the sculpture
of the prophet Muhammad ?? At the country's top court its part of a marble frieze depicting 18 influential lawgivers, including Moses, Confucius and Charlemagne. 
The sculpture of Muhammad shows him holding a Koran in his hand. It's there since the building opened in 1935...
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Pakistani rulers are getting what they deserve. They were told by every sane person not be the frontline state in this "War on terror" and stay out of it. However personal greed of General Musharraf lead the country to devastation. These generals were getting dollars in their personal accounts and they were fighting the war. Once the dollars stopped comming, generals stopped fighting. Pakistan should have stayed out of it like all its other neighbours.

BTW Pakistan is not a failed state and it keep growing thogh there are a lot of illwishers of this country. Pakistan bashers has been singining the song of "failed state" since its inception however meanwhile Pakistan has grown so strong that no leader or country with some level of sanity will dare attacking it.
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A couple of years ago Gallup Pakistan asked people in the country what the most serious threat to Jinnah's pure state was. Some 11% said the Taliban, 18% India – but 59% picked the United States of America.

Well, if 59% of people said so in an opinion poll, it must be right. What can the US do about this worrying statistic? I think the answer lies in the following paragraph.

There is, in short, no consensus of any meaningful kind – except, perhaps, blind antipathy towards Washington.

Yes. Note the word "blind". So again, what can the US, or anyone else, do to combat "blind" antipathy? Nothing. Yes, public perception is important. But you can only go so far in conducting policy based on idiotic poll results.

There are no trusted institutions, no leaders who command respect, no prospect beyond the irredeemably bleak. And it is against this background that America blames Pakistan for its frailty in the fight against terrorism and cuts back on military aid.

Absolutely. By far the best thing to do with a country that has no institutions, leaders, or prospects is give it military aid.