At first sight, there is much to celebrate in Pakistan’s elections this month. The fact that the elections took place at all is heartening. Spiraling internal violence, especially in the tribal areas in the north west of the country, and the murder of the leading contender for Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, on December 27th, created a climate in which many felt elections would be impossible. Perhaps capitalizing on this sentiment, the military regime of President Musharraf experienced several spasms of authoritarianism in the run-up to the elections, clamping down on the media and the judiciary and initially vacillating over how long the return of democracy could be postponed.

In the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, President Musharraf’s most pressing dilemma is whether to re-impose the State of Emergency that he recently lifted in the face of considerable pressure from the West.

The most important geographical focus for the Global War on Terror since 2002 has been Pakistan’s north-west frontier zone neighbouring Afghanistan. Here, in the remote and mountainous terrain which has frustrated invading armies for centuries, it is presumed that the core leadership of Al Qaeda, including Bin Laden and Al Zawahiri, have been hiding with the tacit cooperation of certain local tribes.

In April 2007, Europol issued the latest version of its “EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report”. Widely reported across the world, the report painted a picture of a range of currently active groups and threats across European countries. One area in which the report provoked particular debate was on the question of how significant the Islamist terrorist threat is compared to other forms of terrorism, such as nationalist or anarcho-communist violence.

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