When you contemplate the drift being highlighted by the situation in Sui and around Gilgit, it is hard not to be overwhelmed by confusing thoughts about the state of our governance and the future of our polity. There are, of course, other daily reminders of violent breaches of law and order. Karachi, for instance, is a veritable crucible of crime ranging from target killing to unreported muggings. And the citizens generally feel cheated in their dealings with the officialdom. At times, a traffic jam becomes a parable of their powerlessness.

This wide-angle view may not seem appropriate for a weekly comment. After all, clashes between tribal militants and the paramilitary personnel at the country's largest gas field, resulting in serious damage to the main plant, demand particular attention. Sui is now calm but disruption in the gas plant has resulted in a significant reduction in gas supply across the country. We have to see this against the backdrop of the rise of nationalist sentiment in Balochistan. There have been numerous rocket attacks against gas facilities in the recent past. A leading character in the spectacular chronicle of Sui is Nawab Akbar Bugti, a tribal Sardar whose life and exploits would do justice to a Hollywood blockbuster.

There is also great suspense about how the Sui saga will unfold. In an exclusive interview to Geo on Tuesday, President General Pervez Musharraf issued a stern warning to tribal militants. He said: "Don't push us....This is not the 1970s, and this time you won't even know what hit you". This led Nawab Bugti to claim that the army and paramilitary forces "have thrown a ring around us". Eventually, the police on Thursday sealed all routes to Dera Bugti, situated near the Sui gas field, and some observers saw a limited military operation in the offing.

The latest encounter in Sui in which three paramilitary soldiers were killed was particulrly serious, but the Balochistan situation has remained volatile for some time; Baloch nationalists strongly oppose the development of Gwadar port. According to BBC, there have been more than 30 bomb attacks in Quetta alone in the last year. The deadliest of these killed at least 11 people and wounded over 30 in December. A group calling itself the Balochistan Liberation Army said it had carried out the bombing.

Far from the rugged terrain of Balochistan, the scenic heights of the Northern Areas have also become the stage of bloody disorder. On Saturday, January 8, prominent Shia leader Agha Ziauddin was critically injured when gunmen opened fire on his car in Gilgit. Fifteen people died in violent protests before calm was restored after the imposition of curfew. On Thursday, Agha Ziauddin died of his wounds in the military hospital in Rawalpindi. The news of his death enraged his supporters, mainly in the Northern Areas and a curfew had to be imposed in Skardu, the second biggest city of the region. Troops were also deployed in other parts of the area in which Shias, unlike in the rest of the country, constitute a majority.

Both developments are manifestations of problems that have lingered for years. And both are crucial in the context of protecting Pakistan's solidarity and peaceful existence. That the ruling establishment has not been able to resolve these conflicts is the true measure of our loss of the national sense of direction. Take this as a crisis of governance. This crisis is reflected in its elementary form by the fact that single events catalysed the present situation in Sui as well as in Gilgit. In Sui, clashes began after reports that a lady doctor there was gang-raped. The inability of the administration to deal with this alleged outrage prompted massive disorder. Similarly, the attack on Agha Ziauddin set off the bloody riots in Gilgit.

Obviously, the administration is found incompetent at both levels: it cannot handle somewhat isolated cases of serious crime and seems congenitally incapable of resolving deep conflicts with proper institutional and creative strategies. In fact, the quality of our governance is becoming so poor because of the erosion of democratic and civil society institutions, that there seems no room whatsoever in the system for individuals who have integrity and talent. It was in this perspective that I ventured, at the outset, to take a holistic view of the prevailing malaise. Hence, Sui and Gilgit are merely two prominent symptoms of the sickness of the state.

If you look carefully, you will find many more examples of the virtual breakdown of administration. Our rulers are fortunate that the media, with its obsession with politics, has largely ignored an investigative exploration of the hard news. We tend to look at the seminal issues of poverty, health and education in terms of cold statistics. Major stories of crime and social dereliction are dutifully buried, in the case of newspapers, in inside pages. You seldom come across stories that bring alive the human angle. But this is something that I would like to take up on some other occasion. Being a journalist myself and in the twilight of my career, I also feel offended by the fact that there are stories we share with high functionaries that are never published. That is how newsmen are often much more informed than their readers or viewers.

So many other symptoms should be taken into account to detect the real cause of the system's failure. One news item must have baffled many of us. An alleged militant accused of trying to assassinate President Musharraf escaped from the custody of air force authorities in Rawalpindi. A report published on Thursday says that he escaped in late November last year after being convicted and sentenced to death in the attempted assassination of the president in December 2003. Instructively, it was the foreign media that broke this news.

There is the case of the kidnapping of two additional session judges from a highway in interior Sindh some 40 days ago. They had not been recovered till the writing of this column on Saturday, but 12 Wapda employees, kidnapped on Wednesday in Rajanpur district, were rescued on Friday in an operation involving hundreds of 'jawans'. Apparently, cases of kidnapping for ransom have increased. Every society, we know, has its share of high crime. I am not sure how Pakistan would fare in comparison with other developing or politically deviant countries.

Still, Karachi appears to be inordinately afflicted with murders of a particular kind: individuals are abducted, their bodies later found in some dark alley. A recent target killing was of Anwar Bhaijan, a Baloch leader of Lyari and an anti-drug campaigner who had struggled for social causes. Lyari, incidentally, has suffered the reign of drug mafia, and infighting between two gangs is said to have claimed over a hundred lives during the past year.

But these matters do not make big headlines. We are learning to take so many things for granted, almost as bored spectators. Things fall apart, as Yeats had said. The centre cannot hold. Is some revelation at hand?