Jane Perlez Reports worrisome developments in Pakistan in today's Times:

Even as hundreds of thousands of people stream back to the Swat Valley after months of fighting, one important group is conspicuously absent: the wealthy landowners who fled the Taliban in fear and are the economic pillar of the rural society.

The reluctance of the landowners to return is a significant blow to the Pakistani military’s campaign to restore Swat as a stable, prosperous part of Pakistan, and it presents a continuing opportunity for the Taliban to reshape the valley to their advantage.

Now it was the general bad behavior of these fools - their greed and injustice - that has kept the peasants of the Swat Valley poor in the first place. It has also never been documented that these clowns ever have done anything but live off their inferiors. No investment, no entrepreneurial inputs just give me the money, thank you.

At they same time they provided valuable legal services by administering the corrupt local courts to their own advantage.

Of course the government of Pakistan and our own development folks have opposed land reform as communistic. Unfortunately the Taliban is taking a leaf from the communist playbook, redistributing land and providing the poor with fairer courts.

The Pakistani military could of course finish the job that the Taliban started and send these clowns off to the US where they would swell the ranks of the Republican Party. Which would probably secure the peasants loyalty to the government.

The US is a big country. We have already absorbed the Cuban upper classes. The Pakistani landlords probably won't hurt us too much.