We are bemused, not for the first time, by an organized jailbreak that this weekend turned 400 Pakistani Taliban loose onto the streets.

Probably the biggest fish to slip back into the stream was already under death sentence for attempting to assassinate Mussharaf.

Without dwelling overlong on the individual stories, we may profitably wonder how it can be that Af/Pak jails are so porous

I can only hope that if I am ever in the slam, it has similar administration--although several of my cousins might opt to prevent rather than facilitate my escape.

The underlying flaw in the penal system under review, like the underlying flaw in the whole Af/Pak adventure, is that the Pashtuns are all cousins--all *41 million of them.

That's why all their names (think, eg.,,Karzai) end in  "ai".

When the Brits ran ot of conquering zeal half-way into Pashtunistan, about where the Hindu Death is (Hindu Kush...), they drew one of their customary lines on a map, and carried on.

Until the whole enterprise fell apart (literally, with partition) in 1947.

The Pashtuns are not about to be their own jailors--indeed, the  Afghan National Army on which we have pinned our current hopes for graceful exit (cf, ungraceful exit) from this briar patch, is mostly ethnic Tajiks (like Ahmad Shah Massoud) who are viewed as "foreigners" by the Pashtuns on the northern side of the Durand Line.

Bottom line: Why go out on the lake, if you are going to catch-and-release.

Big fish, little fish, it's all the same.

No jail built can hold'em.

*"The Pashtuns are the world's largest (patriarchal) segmentary lineage ethnic group. According to Ethnologue, the total population of the group is estimated to be around 50 million"