Have You Heard The Good News About Pakistan?

Pakistan has recently taken on the role Americans once reserved for Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Iran, and (before that) the Soviet Union.

It's the unknowable, foreign, other, dangerous in the extreme. It frightens the children. It's meant to.

We're told, for instance, that Pakistan harbors Al Qaeda, its government is unstable and autocratic. It's the world's most dangerous place.

Maybe. But when you see Pakistan through Pakistani eyes, as it is my privilege to do, it's not so black-and-white.

My friend Tariq Mustafa IM'ed me from Karachi this morning with some of the good news:

• Every corporation in the Karachi area filed their tax returns electronically for 2007. I'll bet you money that's not true in Georgia. Many companies here haven't even started in on their returns.
• A job board launched by two Pakistani emigrants to Stanford now powers some of the biggest blogs in the valley. Silicon Valley, that is.
• oDesk is illustrating their outsourcing capabilities by showing off opportunities in Pakistan.

(Picture from The Economist.) Does this make up for the Bhutto assassination, or the Musharraf dictatorship, the rise of the Taliban or the fear of atomic weapons getting into the wrong hands? Of course not.

But Pakistan is not the cartoon we make of it. Pakistan is a complex, robust society of over 100 million people, rich in human capital, in business acumen, in technical savvy. Pakistan has fine universities, it has talented businesspeople, it has some of the best brains on the planet. The vast majority aren't political. They're devoted, instead, to trying to make a living, to raising their families, to living in peace with their neighbors.

Most of the world, in fact, is like this. There are entrepreneurs who live in the Congo. There are brilliant people still living in Zimbabwe. Venezuela is crawling with talent. My wife works with a Columbian who operates out of an office in Guatemala.

This is the reality of our world. There are frightening people in it, yes. But it is in fact a very wonderful world, filled with good, kind, winning people.

When we let politicians convince us it's different, when we give in to our paranoia (as others are persuaded to give in to theirs) we do ourselves the greatest disservice. When we close our eyes, or close our minds, to the economic opportunities and technological growth of the whole world, we do America no favors. We do our children no favors.

It is only when we blindly obey that we are sheep.