Fun seekers this summer will probably be crossing Pakistan off their list of potential holiday destinations. The tourism ministry is run by Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) an Islamist party which has a sideline in madrassas. JUI-F has said that it wants to put a stop to holidaymakers’ “immoral practices” and is reconciled to losing the potential Ibiza / Greek island trade. More effective than leaflets from the tourism ministry is the risk of having your head hacked off as happened to Polish engineer, Piotr Stanczak recently.

A moribund tourist trade is the least of the country’s problems. The country had to scrounge $6.7 billion from the International Monetary Fund in November. In the Punjab one third of the textile factories are shut down due to a combination of the recession and shortages of gas and electricity.

It gets worse. President Asif Zardari when not worrying about who is most likely to succeed in assassinating him presides over an incompetent and corrupt government which provides jobs for some of his unelected cronies. They gradually seem to be losing control over big chunks of the country, though to be fair there have always been parts of Pakistan which were never that well integrated into the state. Zardari says that Islamist hold “huge amounts of land”.

In the North-West Frontier Province the Taliban are on the rampage mirroring a Pushtun rising against the American occupiers in Afghanistan. This is tying down 120 000 Pakistani troops who are not even able to keep open the roads along which American supplies are transported. Over 140 girls’ schools have been burned down, women have to wear a burqa, music is banned and you can no longer ask your barber to shave your beard.

Tens of thousands of people have fled the Federally Administered Tribal Areas which are strafed by Pakistani helicopter gunships and attacked by US Predator drones. In the west Baluchistan is rebelling against the central government which is also losing its grip on the huge city of Karachi (pop 15m).The number of suicide bombing has increased from 6 in 2006 to 56 in 2007 to 60 in 2008.

The paradox is that the major threat to the Pakistani state has been nurtured for decades by its own Inter Services Intelligence Agency when it started funding and training Islamist groups to fight the Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Pakistani military thinking is that controlling significant forces in Afghanistan gives them strategic depth against their mortal enemy India. The same Islamist organisations have also tied down a dozen divisions of the Indian army in Kashmir much more cheaply than the Pakistani army could have done with conventional forces. They have been doing this since 1947.

When they stand for elections the Islamist parties do not fare well. JUI-F got 2.2% and 6 seats. That’s not really the point. The country is going to suffer hard from capitalism’s recession, the ongoing attacks by its own army and the murderous disregard the Americans display for civilians will encourage the most backward and reactionary opponents to the regime. Neither the government nor the army have a solution which is not wholly dependent on the support of US imperialism and all the while larger chunks of the state are falling under the control of pro-Taliban forces.

Pakistan is starting to slowly resemble Somalia. Anwar Kamal, a commander of an anti-Taliban tribal army says: “We are heavily loaded with heavy weapons, from top to toe with anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank guns and mortars. It is the fashion these days, heavy weapons.”

Quite.