BRITAIN'S PAKISTAN PROBLEM

Sadiq Khan, British MP and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department of Communities and Local Government with special responsibility for Community Cohesion and the Fire Service (a totally appropriate pairing given current European trends), wants UK foreign policy to be guided by the misperceptions of Pakistani youth not in Britain but in Pakistan:

Khan, London's first Muslim MP, said the UK must differentiate itself from the US after attending meetings at universities in Pakistan. "I listened to the anger and pain over the challenges that young people growing up in Pakistan face, including the anger and frustration over US drone attacks," he said.

The attacks by unmanned US drones have provoked fury in Pakistan, where scores of militants have been killed in the country's remote border regions, along with innocent civilians.

"The anger and frustration at the drone attacks was huge," Khan said. "The view they [the students] had was that the UK was somehow responsible for this. They haven't understood this was purely a US matter. They lumped us together with the US, which to me is a poison. It demonstrates to me we have a big problem."

The big problem is Pakistan; unfortunately, the solution to the problem is probably going to entail the application of extreme violence.