F rom the fires lit across the borderlands of the British Empire, strange rumours had begun to rise of a Faqir with occult powers, which no power could crush with guns and cannon. “Firearms could not hurt his followers,” a military intelligence officer recorded in 1937. The Faqir of Ipi could turn branches brought by his followers into guns, his followers insisted, turn a few loaves of bread in a basket into enough food for his army . H is divine powers could even turn bombs dropped from aeroplanes into shreds of paper—a prophecy proved when pamphlets fell from the air, instead of high explosive.

Last week, Kh a waja Asif, Pakistan’s d efence m inister, warned that his country’s military is prepared to strike “deep inside Afghanistan” . It’s a

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