Pakistan: A Note on Civil Unrest

Riots, I think, are inherently politically incoherent.

The extent and intensity of the street violence following Benazir Bhutto's assassination may strike one as far less against Musharraf's government (otherwise man the barricades) and more in line with an incontinent and apolitical lust for engagement with base emotions.

Confronted with an individual who has engaged in some inexplicable act of violence, a social worker might probe for the "precipitating event"; confronted here with strangers in riot involving sundry others and private property, one well knows the event that opened the gates, but the sensibility of so many acts lies in the psychology of the perpetrators rather than in the politics of the culture.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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