The price to life is $50,000. Gannon documents the graduation ceremony of a training camp in Balochistan in 2002 where some trainees were signed up as suicide bombers and encouraged to travel in pairs to boost each other’s morale. The chicken soup for the soul offered to them would have made collective interest dominant over self interest or better still crossed the political impasse characteristic of Pakistan i.e. making self-interest equal to national interest.

To what extent can one man be blamed for the entrenchment of decade long procedures? Musharraf’s regime continued to provide resources to militant Afghan Muslims, including the immunity providing number plate 83 handed by ISI to its favourites and found to be protecting UN hostage takers. Maybe it’s the habit of the personalization of rule. Maybe it is justified because even if he isn’t doing it, he’s definitely not doing anything to tie the strings differently. Abstinence from bad does not produce goodness, just neutrality and it leaves the aftertaste of rusting lead.