Born in 1947, in a context of extreme violence, Pakistan, intertwined between Afghanistan and its Indian enemy, had to forge its identity. To consolidate its domination, the military authorities used Islam as an instrument and staged a series of coups d’état, jeopardising any moves towards democracy. From supporting the Afghans and the Americans in the face of the Soviet invasion in the 1980s to the emergence of jihadism linked to large-scale attacks, via the hunt for Bin Laden, the ‘land of the pure’, officially allied with the West, has produced monsters that have turned against both the world and itself.
