I think that one of the sort of untold and unheard story of Pakistan’s entire existence in the United States media was the lawyers’ movement that peacefully, I might add, and in large terms secularly, drove out of power a entrenched military dictator, both out of military power, but also out of civilian power.


And I think that that really speaks towards two inherent presences in Pakistani society. One is they have a robust, critical media that is not multi-—sort of multi-voiced. There’s Urdu presses, Urdu newspaper channels, English newspaper channels and other regional channels and newspapers, so very, very diverse media that has had a critical engagement with the state on many different levels. And secondly, the need of Pakistani people, in general, to—you know, as in any other citizenry of the world, to ask for security, to ask for safety, to ask for engagement with their government.

And I think that the rise of this sort of civil movement, the lawyers’ movement and its sort of student wing, really speaks to the articulation by the Pakistani people that they want to operate within a democratic framework and not within a sort of a military dictatorship that they had been under for the past ten years.