The much-hyped 'failed car-bomb incident at the Times Square New York has an accused named Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani. There are some in Pakistan that might call this 'another drama of the kind CIA had staged nine years ago to enable George Bush to concoct the 9/11 rationale for war. But the Indian-born editor of Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria, has called Pakistan a terrorist hothouse in a recent article and has even gone on to say that for a wannabe terrorist shopping for help, Pakistan is a supermarket. To those wishing to analyse with due impartiality, the remarks would seem based on prejudice. Washington is pressurizing Pakistan by showing that Shazad had been trained in Pakistan. See also a statement by the government of Britain that 70 percent of the terror plots it has uncovered in the past decade can be traced back to Pakistan and that Pakistan remains a terrorist hothouse even as Jihadism is losing favour elsewhere in the Muslim world. From Egypt to Jordan to Malaysia to Indonesia, radical Islamic groups have been weakened militarily and have lost much of the support they had politically. Why not in Pakistan? The answer is simple. Since its founding, the Pakistani government has supported and encouraged Jihadi groups, creating an atmosphere that allows them to flourish. It appears to have partially reversed course in recent years but the rot is deep and well-festered.-DR. MUNAWAR CHOUDHRY, Lahore, June 21.