I have to say I like Obama a lot. His record is the best. He's always been vocal about his opposition to the war in Iraq. Frankly, he seems very good in a lot of ways.

Certainly, if we believe in democracy and democratic systems, when [Benazir Bhutto] failed to pass any legislation, really, at all in her first two years in government during her first term and in fact had a tenure that was marked not only by gross corruption but by human rights abuses, that should have been a time for people to say, "Well, OK, we've given you an opportunity and you haven't bettered the institutions, you haven't strengthened the democratic cause - we may not vote you back."

There are two things. There was the moral responsibility, and that, first, is creating an atmosphere where the security forces can kill with impunity, where they can turn up at a place, shoot seven people - really at point-blank fashions - and then get away with it and be, in fact, promoted. And then there is the actual responsibility, the governmental responsibility. My aunt's government forbade us, initially, from filing a police report - which is every Pakistani citizen's right under the law.

I think that our reliance on dynasty is part of the problem here, because dynasty is inherently undemocratic. It's a very entitled thing to suggest that only one member of one family can save a country of 180 million people. It has to be about people who live in constituencies coming forward to represent them, not the sort of parachuted, elite class that comes in, wins elections and then leaves.

In any conflict area, it is always the women who are the first point of attack. But I think the more they have seen of oppression and violence, they have gotten more brave, more strong, more fearless than they were. You see this refusal to just keep quiet and do as you are told.

In fact, if you look at people within our government, they seem to be quite enthusiastically fighting the war against their own people at the behest of the United States. So it doesn't seem to me that the strong way to oppose this is by joining politics at all, but just to keep speaking and to keep talking about it.

Pakistan is, I always feel, hopeful. You know, our system of government is not, and the system of foreign policy whereby we do whatever is asked of us as long as the price is right only proves to fundamentalist outfits and to militant groups that when we talk of things like democracy, when we talk of things like foreign policy, what we're really talking about is being pro-American.