Pakistan’s Minister of Finance, Syed Naveed Qamar finally delivered his long awaited budget speech for 2008-09 in Parliament House. This devastating budget represents another illusive budget declared by another failing administration which contains nothing for the majority of the people of Pakistan except deprivation and destitution.

The death toll of the Burmese cyclone, called Nargis, to date has been estimated by the Burmese authorities to be about 22,000 people with other sources estimating it to be as high as 100,000. There is also a real risk of further fatalities with disease, lack of health care and lack of food and water expected to take further lives. In terms of the scale of the disaster this is certainly on a par with recent incidents such as the Tsunami in 2004, the Pakistan earthquake in 2005, the floods in Bangladesh in 2007, and now the earthquake in Southern China of the past few days.

Pakistan was established in 1947 with the view of the majority that the new born state would be a unified state based upon Islamic principles and composed of Sindh, Baluchistan, Punjab and the areas of the North West Frontier. The aspirations of the people was to see two other areas forming part of the new unified state, namely, the Bengali speaking area of Bengal and Kashmir, which had a Muslim majority. Indeed, Bengal became East Pakistan; however, Kashmir was not to be part of the new Muslim state. In 1948 Pakistani forces were closing up on Srinagar the capital of Jammu Kashmir and had they continued they would have unified the Muslim dominated Kashmir with Pakistan but due to a compromise reached with the UN and India, the early Pakistani leadership called for a withdrawal of troops that led to Jammu Kashmir becoming a disputed area for ever.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December has thrown Pakistan into further turmoil ahead of the scheduled parliamentary elections, which are scheduled for February 18^th. Already in a volatile state for much of this year following Musharraf's attempted sacking of the Chief Justice, the lawyers' movement, Musharraf's Lal Masjid massacre and his recent state of Emergency, Pakistan has seen an outbreak of renewed violence and tension across much of the country. Together with the ongoing flour crisis, the sharp increase in the price of other food items and the frequent power outages, life for ordinary Pakistanis has become intolerable. Coupled with Western forces engaged on it's Western front threatening to bring the so called ‘War on Terror' across it's borders, Pakistan faces an unprecedented existential crisis not seen before in it's 60 year history.

On December 26th 2007 a new agreement was signed between Russia and Turkmenistan to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan through Kazakhstan to Russia. This agreement must be viewed as part of the on-going struggle between various nations to control the immense energy resources of Central Asia. Western governments were aghast at the deal as they had been courting Turkmenistan to ship some of its natural gas reserves under the Caspian Sea through favourable countries to western markets, bypassing Russia.

In the aftermath of the events of 11^th September 2001, Afghanistan became the first target in the brutality that has become America's ‘War on Terror' launched by George W Bush. Today, six years on and watching the events unfold, one might be forgiven for thinking that we are still sitting in the early part of the year 2002. The recent joint assault on Musa Qala to recapture control from the Taliban by NATO, American, British and Afghan forces, a town on the foothills in the province of Helmand in southern Afghanistan, has seen many thousands of civilians flee from the battle scene in the last few weeks in anticipation of the attack. Even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's carefully scripted arrival in Afghanistan to coincide with the ‘capture' of Musa Qala, a blatant piece of cheap triumphalism, cannot mask the fact that the objectives the West set for itself in terms of successfully occupying this Muslim country, have been an abject failure. Six years on the armies of the colonialist nations that invaded and occupied Afghanistan are having to fight over the same territory again.

The re-election of Karimov, President of Uzbekistan for a third 7 year term on 23^rd December comes as no surprise considering his reign of brutality and tyranny over the Muslims of Uzbekistan that rivals anything seen under the worst tyrants the Muslim world has ever seen.