Here's a slideshow  link to some photographs out of Pakistan. They were taken on December 31 and January 2nd.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Suddenly, it seems, Pakistan is facing new volatility. And in the super-charged atmosphere prevailing after the assassination for former prime minster Benazir Bhutto, some folks smell a conspiracy in advance of parliamentary elections.

Just around the time that Pakistanis began recovering from the violence, looting and arson ignited by Bhutto’s slaying on Dec. 27, electricity cuts lasting up to 12 hours erupted across the country.

News media also began reporting nationwide shortages of natural gas, used for heating and cooking, and flour, used to bake chapattis, the flat bread that is a staple at almost every meal in this impoverished country of 165 million.

Over the last few days, newspapers have been filled with stories about people desperately searching for flour, cities and towns shivering in chilly, rain-dampened winter dark, motorists unable to fill up because powerless gas stations can’t run their pumps and officials warning against hoarding and price-gouging.

Television news channels have been airing video footage of angry Pakistanis waiting in long lines to snap up scarce supplies of flour and bottled gas, or staging protests over the shortages and the price increases they have triggered.

A friend angrily recounted how during a visit to Lahore late last week, the motorized rickshaw in which he was riding ran out of petrol. He and the driver were forced to push the heavy, three-wheeled contraption from blacked-out petrol station to blacked-out petrol station until they found one that was able to sell them some fuel.

National, provincial and local officials have been offering various explanations for the shortages.

Dawn, an English-language newspaper, on Sunday quoted sources at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture as saying that farmers under-planted the winter wheat crop by a total of 200,000 hectares because of a water shortage and higher fertilizer and seed prices.

The News on Sunday quoted Finance Ministry sources as saying that winter weather had driven up demand for power, creating an unprecedented peak shortfall of 3,600 MW.

Power cuts have reportedly forced the closure of steel plants and flourmills, throwing thousands of workers out of jobs. The disruptions are expected to stunt economic growth that officials say has already been undercut by the bloody rampages that paralyzed the country after Bhutto’s assassination.

The Finance Ministry sources also warned the News on Sunday that Pakistanis should be ready to tolerate power shortages for years to come because the construction of five huge state-run hydroelectric projects is way behind schedule.

Some folks, however, wave off these explanations as nonsense. They see a sinister political plot.

Their reasoning goes something like this: Bhutto’s death has driven lingering popular dislike for Musharraf and the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q through the roof because of widespread suspicions of official complicity.

Knowing they cannot win Feb. 18 parliamentary elections except by fraud so massive that it could not be hidden, this reasoning continues, they are deliberately withholding basic commodities and cutting power. The goal: ignite social unrest to justify the re-imposition of a national emergency and the indefinite postponement of the polls.

There is no proof to back up these contentions. Conspiracy theorizing and political intriguing are akin to national past-times in Pakistan, especially these days.

For his part, Musharraf has vowed that there will be no further delay in the polls postponed from Jan. 8 by Bhutto’s death.

That remains to be seen.

Pakistan's election authority announced Wednesday that nationwide parliamentary elections due next week will be postponed until Feb. 18. It blamed the delay on the destruction of electoral materials during unrest triggered by the assassination last Thursday of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Whipping through Pakistan's commercial capital of Karachi on the back of a motorbike is not for the faint of heart. But sometimes it's the only way to go.

The city is akin to a colossal bumper car pavilion. The broad roadways and narrow streets gush with trucks, cars, motorcycles and motorized rickshaws brawling to outrace each other. Tossing regulations and safety aside, drivers dodge into oncoming traffic, jet across crowded intersections and fly through red lights as if fleeing the clutches of pursuing beasts.

At some intersections, blue-capped, white-panted traffic police whirl their arms in furious attempts to bring the exhaust-spewing tide to heal. Elsewhere, officers stand on the teeming sidewalks, indolently watching the moving mess, knowing there is nothing they can do.

Drivers damn the police and lament the vehicular bedlam. But having vented their frustrations, they rev their engines and revert to the very same anarchic behavior they have just cursed.

Aijaz Shaikh, a reporter for an Urdu-language newspaper, has ably buzzed me around his hometown on his battered 50cc Honda since my arrival on Sunday to cover the aftermath of Benazir Bhutto's assassination.

I drove a motorcycle in similar chaos when I lived in New Delhi during the 1980s. But I had forgotten just how hairy it could be. I clung white-knuckled to the rear grip of Aijaz's clattering motorbike, unable to get a firm purchase on the bent left-side footrest as we joined the rush of traffic.

But as I relaxed, reassured by Aijax's deft piloting, I came to realize the advantages.

When the four-wheelers become snared by the massive traffic jams for which Karachi is known, their two-wheel cousins slide right on through, threading the maze-like gaps between the snarled vehicles or scooting into the opposing lanes.

Aijaz's clattering steed has been a godsend. We have raced between interviews and avoided troubled neighborhoods, detouring down serpentine alleys of the trash-choked ghettoes in which most of the city's 17 million people live in grinding poverty.

And when gasoline shortages and street clashes drove taxis off the roads after Bhutto's death, Aijaz was there with his motorcycle.