Banning plastic shopping bags of the sort you get at the food store will solve one problem; specifically, what to do with them when you get them home and unpack the groceries. Southampton Village recently outlawed the bags and now East Hampton Village officials are considering doing the same. From its beginnings in San Francisco and Ireland, a national and international movement to curtail the use of the bags has been spreading.

    Advocates of bans say that the one-time-use petroleum-based bags are a wasteful use of nonrenewable resources and unnecessarily fill up landfills. They can end up in surface waters with harmful effects on marine life. In the environment nonbiodegradable bags and other plastic objects slowly degrade into small particles that can attract toxic chemicals and be consumed by wildlife. Fish in particular that are contaminated in this way can be a pathway by which toxins can enter the food chain, in some cases ending up in humans. Nationwide, only about 5 or 6 percent of them are recycled, according to federal estimates. Paper bags can be made from recycled materials.

    Plastic bag manufacturers have counterattacked, saying that reusable bags can be a source of harmful microbes. Some libertarian-minded people have said that government should not infringe on the rights of the people to bear plastic. Others have questioned whether a patchwork of localities banning the bags would withstand a Constitutional challenge.

    Surprisingly, perhaps, opposition from retailers has been limited, from what we have seen. This may be in part due to many of them seeing an opportunity to cut costs by not buying thousands upon thousands of bags. At the same time, some may see opportunities at the checkout counter to sell reusable bags, particularly those that carry the company’s logo.

    East Hampton Village’s continuing efforts to go “green” should be commended.

    Getting ready this week for a trip that will carry me 8,410 miles away, I’ve found myself thinking, incongruously, about flying to Block Island long ago.

    I can’t date it exactly, but the trip had to have been before June 17, 1963, because that was the day my first child was born. (Happy birthday, David!) Ev and I hadn’t been married very long and were able to pick ourselves up and take off when a friend invited us to accompany him there to visit mutual friends.

    As a young bride in what had not yet become the celebrity-filled Hamptons, I was enthralled by the accomplished people I met, people I considered justifiably famous. A.J. Liebling and his wife, Jean Stafford, were among them.

    Joe called one day to say there was room for us on a plane he had hired to take him to Block Island for a day’s visit, because his wife was afraid of small planes. Flying to Block Island was exciting in itself, and visiting the old-fashioned resort for the first time was lots of fun. The friends we went to see were interesting people, although I can’t remember the conversation. When it was time for the return flight, however, fog had rolled in and we had to spend the night. We stayed in one of the island’s rambling old wooden hotels. It wasn’t safe to drink the tap water.

    Joe was a legendary journalist at The New Yorker and author of more than a dozen books, including “The Sweet Science” and “The Earl of Louisiana.” He was short and rotund. I have a distinct memory of his walking up the stairs to his room on the hotel’s second story in front of us.  He had a pair of swimming trunks under one arm and a box of salt-water taffy for Jean under the other.

    That night, I took to drinking Joe’s favorite Scotch — Teacher’s Highland Cream — and I have liked it ever since. You don’t see Teacher’s on many liquor store shelves these Continued from B1

days, but Jacques Franey of East Hampton’s Domaine Wines and Spirits kindly carries it at my request. Its distinct taste and quality is said to come from its blend, which contains 45 percent of a single malt called Ardmore.

     I remain bemused by having come back from Block Island, some 35 miles away (at least as the crow flies) and some 50 years ago, with a taste for Scotch. A wonderful journalist and well-known gourmand had recommended it, and that was good enough for me.

    The trip this week is to Ethiopia in the company of my daughter, who has adopted a second Ethiopian child, a boy, there. On the way, we will spend a night in Dubai, a Never Never Land that is, I am sure, as different from Ethiopia as imaginable. Alcoholic drinks won’t be on our agenda in either place.

    I have no idea what my memories of Ethiopia will be, but I expect the trip to bring home a grandson (not to mention the 30-hour return journey with a confused toddler and a mountain of diapers) will leave me with many.

In close to 15 years living full time in East Hampton, I have come to love this community. I can’t think of a nicer place to live or raise a family, despite the fact that other areas might offer a more affordable lifestyle or have fewer people “from away” telling the locals what can and cannot be done. Although 15 years relegates me to being a very recent transplant, my love for our natural environment, endless beaches, and the sport of surfcasting has quickly aligned me with the traditions here and made me want to fight to keep them.

The latest attack on those traditions is an ongoing lawsuit waged by Napeague landowners to wrest a stretch of beach from control of the East Hampton Town Trustees and in turn from public use. The suit brought against both the trustees and the town board has been in the works for nearly two years, yet many of us are just hearing about it now. A judgment is coming down to the wire, and unless there’s some out-of-the-box thinking and quick action, a very dangerous precedent regarding privatization of public beaches may be set.

Six months back, there were rumors about Napeague property owners complaining that beach drivers were speeding in front of their beachfront properties, coming too close to beach users. There were more complaints of noise, beach fires, and dogs walking too close to their properties. At that time I wrote a letter to The Star speaking out against beach privatization. After my letter was printed, I was contacted by News 12 Long Island and interviewed for a short TV story that also included an interview with the attorney for the Napeague property owners. 

His statement “We don’t have a problem with people on the beach . . . only vehicles” made me think the suit was focusing mainly on the beach driving issue. But, according to a report in the March 31 Star, the suit may now be largely a “no trespassing” issue.

Was this suit ever really about beach driving? Or was that just a ploy to distract the public from seeing the true agenda? Many now believe that the suit simply amounts to a land grab by a small group of elitists with the aim of increasing the value of their beachfront properties while disenfranchising everyone else.

Just this week we were told the Napeague suit is hinging on obscure records dating back more than 100 years, records that may or may not have validity. Everyone, including the trustees, probably assumed that Napeague was safe under the protection of the Dongan Patent, so it is indeed troubling that after 129 years it’s only now coming to light that a fellow named Benson bought the disputed sand in 1882, which might mean that the trustees actually do not control this particular beach. 

If there’s even a chance that this is true, then it’s a travesty that so little information regarding this lawsuit was made available to the beachgoing public. Because surely with more information there would have been a greater uprising earlier on in support of the trustees and other town officials to defend against the lawsuit and to protect beach access — which is for many the primary benefit of living here and, for visitors, a top attraction.

Access to our beaches accounts for millions of dollars spent by visitors in motels, restaurants, shops, gas stations, movie theaters, etc., to say nothing of all the millions spent buying houses. This is an important point, not to be glossed over. Aside from those of us born and raised here and those who have chosen to make their homes here, visiting fishermen, surfers, swimmers, joggers, sunbathers, beachcombers, and countless families enjoy our beaches and contribute to our economy.

Even though the lawsuit now seems to have moved beyond beach driving, as an avid fisherman I’d still like to speak to that specific issue. Beach drivers contribute millions of dollars to local coffers. Fanatical anglers come for 20 or more weekends out of a 34-week fishing season, bringing families and spending a few hundred dollars on each trip. Some buy over $350 worth of beach-driving permits annually and bring buddies along who also spend cash freely. And during the “fall run” fishermen from all over take lengthy vacations here, putting big bucks into the pockets of merchants. Surfers, sea kayakers, and other sports enthusiasts also need vehicle access to beaches and spend plenty of money here. 

With regards to safety, after 70 years of beach driving here you’d be hard pressed to find one serious incident in which a beach driver injured a beachgoer!

East Hampton needs to take a page out of Southampton’s book. People there roared like lions when someone attempted to privatize a beach, while in East Hampton, for the most part, we’ve been squeaking like mice. 

We need to become a giant squeaky wheel if there’s still time to get the grease that will let us save Napeague. Shouldn’t we be asking for clarification of the issues in this case? Why not a Town Hall meeting, with plenty of advance notification so hundreds of stakeholders could ask questions with the press present? Conjecture is not good, in fact, it’s dangerous, so we need to hear the facts now. How about getting the town board and the trustees together in one room so we can help both bodies act in concert. With anything less than immediate action, this nightmare of beach privatization will become a harsh reality.

Here are just a few questions that should be on the agenda at a Town Hall meeting: Has anyone besides dueling lawyers been speaking or negotiating with the plaintiffs? What is being negotiated, if anything? Is the judge siding with us so far? Can our lawyer win this precedent-setting case without negotiating? What role are the town supervisor and town board playing in this drama, and are they acting in concert with the trustees? If our attorneys can’t win this suit, what other strategies might the town employ to put pressure on the plaintiffs to capitulate?

Several months back, a trustee quoted in The Star mentioned the possibility of having the disputed portion of beach condemned. Would that be a possible last-resort tactic that could serve to lower the value of the plaintiffs’ properties, the threat of which might prompt them to drop their suit or make major concessions?

When a lawyer representing the plaintiffs calls for a no-trespass motion, as reported in The Star, it sounds ominously as if even beach walkers and sunbathers would be prohibited from accessing the sand above the high-water mark, so prepare to get wet!

On Napeague do we allow ourselves to be herded like sheep into restrictive, narrow, and damp areas close to parking lots? Do we encourage a nightmarish precedent that could possibly lead to the loss of additional public beaches in the near future? Wouldn’t we all be ashamed of ourselves if the legacy we passed down to our children and grandchildren were to have allowed the privatization of our town’s beaches?

My October letter to The Star sparked more than 80 phone calls and e-mails from not only concerned fishermen but also, amazingly, from sympathetic non-fishers and non-beach drivers who felt the tradition of riding along the beach to enjoy a family gathering, surf, or enable a disabled person to have a day on the sand was an integral part of what makes the South Fork so special.

Old Mr. Benson, who we are told may have purchased Napeague 129 years ago, has long since been dead and buried. If we could dig him up and magically get him to speak, maybe he’d say, “What kind of curmudgeon do you think I am? Of course I’ll allow my neighbors to walk and drive on my beach.” 

In the movie version of this calamity, our lawyer would discover Benson’s great-great-grandson still living here and in possession of a legal document scribbled by his great-great-granddad. Over closing music, we’d hear his dying words granting free beach access to the people. “Let them have their traditions, yes, let them walk, swim, fish, and pull their carts on the beach if that’s what makes them happy.”

But this is not the movie version. East Hampton is at a crossroads. Do we bury our heads in the sand, or do we draw a line in it?

    The Facebook revolution, writ small, hit East Hampton Town last week in advance of a deal to award beach food concessions to a couple of out-of-town vendors. In a sequence of events unprecedented for their speed and the number of people who became involved, word got out that the longtime-favorite Ditch Witch and Dune Dog snack trailers in Montauk were to go and newcomers were to take their place.

    Montaukers took to the Internet with haste. From a start late in the evening on May 18, a Facebook group to save the Ditch Witch grew on from dozens to hundreds — and to over 1,300 by this week. Fans posted the e-mail addresses of town officials, and sent messages urging the town board to do something.    

    Online comments were overwhelmingly negative. Many repeated a common theme: Too much of Montauk was changing, and changing much too fast — taking its soul away, one woman wrote. “What the hell is up with East Hampton Town?” a man wondered. “Apparently nothing is sacred,” another wrote. Plans were hatched for a Sunday rally. Others suggested petitions or boycotts. In an insulting reference to the town supervisor, one person wrote, “Hey East Hampton: Disney called, and they want Goofy back.”

    By midday last Thursday, the town board got the message, convening an emergency meeting and tossing out the system by which it had made ill-fated decisions on handing out concessions. It was, in brief, the speediest public outcry we have seen, as well as the fastest official capitulation ever.

    The Ditch Witch and Dune Dog affair points to a new reality in government. Thanks to the power of the Internet, hundreds of people can mobilize in an instant, organizing and speaking out far more rapidly than governments can move to contain the damage of an idea gone wrong. People who might never attend a town board meeting or write a letter can make their voices heard with a few keystrokes. As chaotic as it may be, this is a good thing for democracy. East Hampton Town officials, at least this time, paid attention.

    East Hampton Town’s elected officials have the misfortune of finding themselves in power as a potentially devastating lawsuit over beach access nears a trial date. Defending a cherished right against a group of determined — and well-financed — vacation-property owners would be a challenge for any administration, but the current difficulty is compounded by the fact that the town Republican Committee has accepted sizable donations from one of the lead plaintiffs in the suit.

    Kenneth Silverman of Amagansett and Manhattan gave the East Hampton Town Republican Committee $2,050 as recently as October, well after the suit in which he is an important player came to public attention. (Mr. Silverman also made a $1,000 donation to the Wilkinson for Supervisor campaign in 2007, as did a Catharine Regan, who listed the same Park Avenue address as Mr. Silverman’s, according to the New York Board of Elections.)

    During a recent meeting, the town board was challenged on how vigorously it was or was not defending our beach-access rights. After Democrats in attendance characterized the plaintiffs as a group of “thieves and robbers” poised to steal away a cherished common ground, Mr. Silverman defended his motivations. Then, to the surprise of many, the supervisor and board members offered Mr. Silverman lavish apologies for his reputation’s having been thus besmirched.

    Civility is always welcome, certainly: The board has been repeatedly criticized in the past for a lack of it when addressing anyone it perceives to be an adversary. So this remarkable solicitude toward an actual, legal adversary raised both eyebrows and questions of partiality.

    The Town of East Hampton is a co-defendant, along with the East Hampton Town Trustees, in the lawsuit. No one could argue that Supervisor Bill Wilkinson has been outspoken in the town’s defense; and he named a then-inactive town attorney as its counsel in the matter. This rather watery response is in stark contrast to other high-stakes cases, in which the longstanding policy has been to obtain qualified outside lawyers expert in municipal litigation. As of today, the supervisor has also allowed the cash-strapped town trustees to take the lead in defending against a suit that could be both historic and precedent-setting (and that certainly will be remembered passionately at election time).

    Meanwhile, as is its wont, the board has insisted that its work on the matter must be conducted behind closed doors, and it has kept mum on what actions it may have taken. All this is doing nothing to dispel the impression that it is not dedicated to the defense. Mr. Wilkinson, who says he is personally devoted to the principle of beach access for all, has made the right noises about being in it to win it, but any demonstration of that commitment has yet to emerge.

    The town board is charged with fighting in our name, with all its strength, to preserve our rights, whatever cordial relationships its members might maintain in either their private or public lives.

    The Republican committee needs to dispel the impression, right or wrong, that a warm relationship with one of the plaintiffs is coloring the board’s defense. They should immediately return Mr. Silverman’s donations. And the town board should quickly adopt a resolution proposed by a new group, Citizens for Access Rights, committing the town to fully funding the fight.

“Moving to California is a lot like living in the future,” my friend Peter said to me, as I was fresh from the trauma of moving from Sag Harbor to Marin County one year ago. 

Though Los Angeles runs through both sides of my family for generations, our relocation to Northern California couldn’t have come as more of a shock. The early days of moving felt a bit like trying on a foreign country for size — learning new ways of dressing (Patagonia and Birkenstocks) and socializing (make plans but don’t commit too forcefully). Also, fragrance is forbidden, and recreational cannabis has replaced the evening cocktail.

Since graduating from college, I’ve moved about a dozen times now. In my next lifetime, I vow to come back as a minimalist. Mostly, I’m tired of hanging and then rehanging all my artwork. 

I’m as attached to the watercolor paintings by my grandmother that adorn my walls as I am to the hundreds and hundreds of books that have followed me from coast to coast, their spines newly arranged in a different order each time. I never feel quite settled — like I am home — until those things have been put away, breathing familiar life into unfamiliar spaces. 

We last called Sag Harbor home, and our return trips to the East End last summer and fall filled me with a deep and wonderful feeling of nostalgia. The shifting, magnificent light, the seasons, the warm ocean you can swim in, our friends and their growing children. 

I feel as at home in Sag Harbor as anyplace I’ve ever lived.

Some say that after a cross-country move it takes a solid year to fully settle into new surroundings. Or maybe it’s a decade. Regardless, it’s the traditions we take with us, wherever our destination. 

I come from a small, insular family, and it never feels like Christmastime until my father and mother and I are again sleeping in the same house. Last December, our first Christmas in Northern California, was a year of beginning again. My mother’s holiday cookies and flaky pie crust held up just fine. Yet the magic of Christmas morning felt like we had suddenly swapped hemispheres. The balmy, foggy air. The fragrant eucalyptus trees that would never change color and lose their leaves. 

Looking back now, it didn’t feel like we had fully arrived in California until we decorated our first Christmas tree. 

I’m a latecomer to Christmas. For years, when it was just my husband and me living on the Upper West Side, he would dutifully purchase a tree from a nearby lot on Central Park West, hauling it into our 14th-floor apartment and stringing up a few sets of drugstore lights as I sat idly by, thinking only of the hassle of soon dismantling it. 

But slowly I’m coming around. 

Last Christmas, our two children, Theo and Violet, settled on a whimsical, six-foot-tall evergreen. Once home, going into the garage and dusting off our box of decorations moved me, unexpectedly, to tears. Unwrapping the intricate ornaments that my grandmother had hung on her tree in Hollywood those many decades ago, interspersed with others from my own Southern California childhood, next to the ones that our children had made in Sag Harbor, their glitter and sequins still attached. 

Finally, an outbreath. A feeling of coming home. The twinkling white lights. The angel holding court above the dozens of ornaments that together tell the story of our family. The same ones our children will eventually inherit. 

A wise former therapist used to talk in terms of how many summers he had left. He promised to relish each and every one. In our many conversations over the years, he has gently nudged me to do the same. We’re here and then we’re not. Best to dive into the ocean whenever the opportunity presents itself.

And now another December is here. I’m still not used to warm Christmas days spent in only a T-shirt. I’m also unsure on which coast we will permanently reside. But in the middle of finding our way, I vow to make the most of this holiday season — recreating traditions that ground us in our past while also embracing our new community of friends.

Come January, in the spirit of starting over (and with the freezing cold, shark-infested Pacific Ocean in such close proximity), I will keep my East End brethren in mind when I take my first Polar Bear Plunge on New Year’s Day, swapping East Hampton’s Main Beach for Stinson Beach, outside Bolinas.

Amanda M. Fairbanks is a former reporter at The Star.

    The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals heard a potentially precedent-setting request Tuesday from an Amagansett property owners association that would like to rebuild a portion of the steel dock at the former Bell Estate on Gardiner’s Bay. The Broadview subdivision, named after a mansion that burned there in 1991, contains a number of properties overlooking the water. The seaward end of its dock has largely rusted away into ruin.

    The association’s board has asked for permission to replace a 107-foot-long section of the pier and line part of it with rock “armor.” The problem for the association is that this kind of work has been prohibited since the East Hampton Town Board adopted the Local Waterfront Revitalization Program in 1999, which was approved by state regulators in 2007 and gained federal approval the following year.

    Under the rules, reconstruction of coastal structures, such as the Broadview dock, is not allowed. An exception can be made if the structure can be shown to have a public or environmental benefit. The tumbledown pier under the Broadview bluffs will have neither; it appears to have mainly an aesthetic value to some of the association’s members who would like to see it tidied up.

    Worrisome, too, is the question of what use the association would want to put such a large pier to in the future. Is the Broadview board privately considering plans to someday seek permission to dredge the section of bay bottom immediately adjacent to the dock, to allow access by deep-draft vessels — like the 70-foot yacht Dennistoun Bell once kept there?

    And why does all this matter? Because the town’s waterfront revitalization plan, at its core, is there to preserve both the environment and the free passage of visitors and residents along the public shore. Some have argued that the Broadview dock, by blocking the movement of sand, is already narrowing the public beach at Albert’s Landing to the south. (And, as a footnote, the dock was an impediment to police and county medical investigators trying to reach the body of a man found on the beach nearby on May 22.)

    There may be times and places in which our hard-won rules on coastal structures must be bent. This is not one of them.

    In the end, it was a routine affair — a real estate closing last week that from outward appearances was like any other. The property that changed hands was a large portion of the now closed Boys and Girls Harbor summer camp on Three Mile Harbor in East Hampton. The buyers were the Town of East Hampton and Suffolk County. The tortured route the land deal took before coming to pass had finally come to an end.   

    Money was never the issue. The town was able to tap its community preservation fund, and the county had an account dedicated to land buys like this. Officials agreed to a 50-50 split in 2007. However, a lawsuit from neighbors stalled the proceedings until a mutually agreeable management plan was drafted last year. This document says the tranquillity of nearby residential streets is to be given equal consideration to the site’s natural features and value as a recreational site.   

    The parcel is part of the much stressed Three Mile Harbor watershed. Development of it as house lots would have had a long-term negative effect. It is also thought to contain untouched Native American home sites of archaeological significance.   

    The camp operated from 1954 to 2006, when Tony Duke, who founded it on his own land, and the board of directors decided to concentrate its activities closer to the urban areas from which it had drawn children.   

    Mr. Duke did not have to sell 26 acres to the town and county, nor did he have to agree to the very reasonable $7.3 million price. However, he wanted the property to be used by the public and saw the joint purchase as a way both to ensure that it would and to save it from development in perpetuity. With the deal done, his vision is complete. All involved are to be congratulated for seeing it through.

   Monday is Memorial Day, a time when East Hampton’s Main Street stops for a brief half-hour as veterans and others march to show their support and appreciation for those who have died in the nation’s armed conflicts. Flags come out, old uniforms are unfolded, speeches are delivered at the war monument at the side of Hook Mill.

    While our country is not at peace, this year marks a gradual turn. Troops are coming home from Iraq, and there is optimism that the drawdown of forces in Afghanistan will occur as scheduled.

    In the aftermath of the death of Osama bin Laden, increasing calls have been heard from the left and the right, however, to accelerate the removal of our troops from Afghanistan. Richard Lugar, a Republican senator from Indiana, said earlier this month that the fighting there was sacrificing too many lives and costing too much. President Obama had set a July deadline for wrapping up combat operations, but support for such a hard withdrawal date appears to be wavering.

    The Afghan war has been the longest in U.S. history. On this Memorial Day, as we think of long-ago losses and those of a new generation, Americans might reflect on whether the time has come to finally bring the troops home.

    I recently returned from Pakistan, a sentimental journey to Lahore, the place I was born and which I hadn’t seen for 40 years. Providentially timed, it coincided with the brief lull after the assassinations of the politicians Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti and the furor over Raymond Davis’s espionage activities but before last month’s killing of Osama bin Laden. I’ve come home to hear Pakistan castigated as an untrustworthy and ambivalent partner undeserving of the billions of dollars of American aid it has received since 2002.

    “What do you think about Lahore? Can you believe how much it’s changed?” I was asked over and over again there, as my friends listed the traffic, the crowds, the new subdivisions, the restaurants, the box stores. Yes, of course (I’ve changed too in 40 years), but really their question was rhetorical. They were telling me how their Lahore has changed, how it has been transformed from the green and pleasant place of my youth, a place of order and predictability, still basking in the afterglow of the British Raj, where we worried about contracting dysentery from improperly washed fruit or about being jostled by hideously mutilated beggars in the bazaar.

    Today, home, sweet home requires high walls and iron gates, reinforced by fierce dogs and quasi-uniformed men. Today, my Lahore and theirs has grown to a city of over 10 million, still the cherished cultural heart of Pakistan but now also menacing home to the daarhiwallahs, the bearded fundamentalists in traditional shalwar kameez who easily outnumber the clean-shaven men dressed in the Western style of my day. Lahore is also home to the “khaki,” the unpopular and feared military.

    In the military-religious complex that defines Pakistan’s ruling elite, generals, and mullahs are joined in an unholy political alliance that protects them for and against each other but fails to provide large swaths of the citizenry with a decent life.

    Punjabi women have traditionally covered their heads and upper bodies in public with a light, colorful dupatta, but this time I noticed far fewer women wearing the iconic white or blue shuttlecock-shaped burkas. “Being covered” has become a fashion as well as a religious choice, and varieties of black hijab or chador, sometimes elaborately decorated in silver, populate the streets and shop windows. These fashion choices are more than they appear.

    Despite the growing income inequality, especially among the rural poor, Pakistan is also enjoying a new prosperity and class mobility, forces that are shaping the urban working class and creating a burgeoning middle class. The catalyst for this social change is an influx of international money from foreign development aid organizations, multinational corporations, and growth in the telecommunications and media industries, as well as Saudi money, some of it trickling up in remittances sent by workers who have been flocking to the gulf states since the 1980s to earn wages that are inconceivable in Pakistan.

    Saudi money has also been trickling down since the late ’70s, when the dictator Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq (who was responsible for the hanging of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the father of Benazir) imported religion, specifically Wahhabism, an intolerant form of Islam, from Saudi Arabia into the Pakistani Army. Wahhabism is deepening its hold on Pakistani society by spreading the word through mullahs into the mosques, through women into the home, and through madrassas, the Islamic schools, into the minds of younger generations.

    Pakistan is being torn apart by violent disagreements between fundamentalism and modernity and, within the religion, about which branch of Islam represents the voice of God. Because of its extreme intolerance, Wahhabism is responsible for many of the bloody attacks against Islamic minorities such as the Sufi, Ahmadiya, and Shia branches of Islam and also against Christians. Wahhabism has penetrated political parties and religious groups as well as the army, which consumes as much as 25 percent of the budget and controls much of the foreign policy. No wonder that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has lost interest in its people!

    But not in its elites. The new prosperity is reflected not only in women’s fashions but also in the unapologetically named Defense area, a large, affluent, aspirational Lahore suburb replete with golf courses and clubs for the newly ich, including military officers, politicians, celebrities, and returning Pakistanis enjoying the freedom of dual E.U., U.S.A., or U.K. citizenship. It is not unusual to see Arabic Koranic verse sculpted onto the residences, signaling that a Wahhabi adherent lives within.

    Flights in and out of the Lahore airport are packed with the elite jetting to Dubai to shop or continuing on to destinations in Europe, England, or the United States, their language a fast-paced mixture of Urdu and English, their children American wannabes. For the not yet newly rich, it is now possible, as it hardly was when I grew up in Lahore, for the daughters of illiterate parents to become teachers and doctors and for the sons of house servants to become technicians and engineers.

    Rich people depend on servants to run their huge houses, manage their extravagant social lives, and chauffeur their children to school. Poor people depend on rich people for their food and shelter and, with luck, some support for their children’s education. The system has functioned well for centuries but socio-political change is creating a servant class less willing to work for or remain loyal to the rich; dark stories are told of servants turning out to be gang members who rob or kill their employers.

    In conversations with Pakistanis, I sensed a deep despair about the devolution of their country into a failed state or arguably one that is failing. It’s scant comfort to those who live there that the rest of the world, especially the United States, considers Pakistan too big to be allowed to fail (176 million people, nuclear weapons). It’s one thing to pontificate about failed states and quite another to be a resident of Lahore and to experience the reality of life in a failing state, to be hostage to a government that reminds its people on a daily basis of this failure.

    The realities of life in a failing state are harsh. The electricity supply falls so short of demand in Pakistan that “load shedding” outages occur many times every day, at unscheduled intervals for apparently random duration, snatching people’s control over light, heat, and cooling and, since most water comes from tube wells, leaving them unable to manage their daily lives. The cost in human frustration and interrupted economic activity is enormous, as is the anger toward indifferent and corrupt government officials.

    A failing state fails to protect people from one another. Religious extremists have easy entry into the lives of those they consider infidels; rampant theft of cars, laptops, and cellphones and a moribund judicial system in which impunity rules and thieves and assassins go unpunished have all but uprooted civil order.

    A failed state is one that does not protect its people from widening economic disparities, deepening inflation, and escalating food shortages. A failed state is one that taxes its citizens without providing services in return. The government provides free education but in ghost schools, empty of furniture, books, and teachers. The pupils don’t come because the teachers won’t be there, even though they collect their monthly sal­aries. A failed state is one that has abdicated accountability to its citizens.

    To rebuild itself, Pakistan’s first step must be radical reform of the army and Inter-Services Intelligence. Its weakened civilian government unable to provide the necessary oversight, Pakistan will be unable to reform itself without outside help.

    Raza Kazim, a leading lawyer and thinker, told me: “The time is here and now [to] remove the jihadis, their incompetence, and the ideological humbug we’ve been living with for half a century. [We need] positive support from a global coalition, not American imperialism. The time for imperialism is behind us. A new contemporary army, not one in which the state and religion are combined, with corruption pulled out by its roots. We need to change the whole culture; we need agents of change. We are not self-sustaining; we have not earned our keep.”

    Hazel Kahan, the host of the “Tidings” program on WPKN radio, is writing a memoir about growing up Jewish in Pakistan. She lives in Mattituck.