Pakistan, April 16 -- The beginning of the week marked the 160th anniversary of the start of the American Cvil War. Violence erupted when Confederate forces opened-fire on Fort Sumter, a sea port built on an artificial island in Charleston in the Deep South. The initial death toll for 1861-1865 was put at 620,000 soldiers; including those who died during combat or from accident, starvation and disease. More recent estimates however, claim that this figure is closer to 850,000.

America's wounds from this period have yet to heal, as highlighted by the current debate over reparations for the descendants of slaves, including the four million who were freed at the end of the Civil War when the Confederacy collapsed. Indeed, US lawmakers are c...