The deepening crisis in Pakistan
Regular readers with long memories will recall that I have been worrying about Pakistan since well before the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007.
I've been worrying about Pakistan even more this week after the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore.
Here's why: first, the attack was brazen, audacious, and well-planned. Like the attackers in Mumbai last November, the gunmen in Lahore were well-equipped and apparently well-trained. Unlike the attackers in Mumbai, they all escaped.
Second, if the emails that flooded into the BBC from Pakistan were typical, many people reacted by blaming the government as much as the attackers themselves. That, of course, was the aim of the exercise - to weaken the authority of the government (to be honest, it didn't have much authority anyway).
Third, it raised tensions yet further on the sub-continent. And anything that draws attention away from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border is a plus for the jihadis - it relieves the pressure on their sanctuaries and allows them more freedom to concentrate on destabilising Afghanistan.
The top US diplomat in Afghanistan, Christopher Dell, was quoted yesterday as saying that he now regards Pakistan as a greater security threat to America than Afghanistan. I can see why he might say that.
Let me count the ways, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote in a somewhat different context. Domestic security is now close to break-down - the attack on the Sri Lanka cricket team may well have been facilitated by co-conspirators in the police, and huge chunks of the border area with Afghanistan are beyond central government control.
It's true that this has long been the case, but now with local tribal leaders openly making common cause with Pakistani Taliban groups, it's a major threat both to internal security and to Afghanistan.
The economy is in melt-down: after a boom lasting nearly a decade, now the good times are over, and the government has had to go cap in hand to the IMF to ask for a bail-out.
(I was struck, by the way, when I spoke to the Pakistani high commissioner in London on the day of the Sri Lanka attack, that he went out of his way to emphasise the urgent need for international help in providing basic education and health services. Winning hearts and minds, he said, was as important as beating the jihadi insurgents militarily.)
The government is in a mess. Yes, it's a civilian government, and it was elected. But President Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's widower, has gained next to no respect from voters since taking office. Mr Zardari himself comes with a substantial amount of political baggage dating back to the days when he was known as "Mr Fifteen Per Cent" because of allegations that he took massive commission payments on government contracts, and his Pakistan People's Party seems much more interested in scoring points against its political rivals in the Muslim League than in doing anything to improve the lives of voters.
And the military? Well, the men in uniform have a habit of stepping in whenever civilian governments look incapable of governing - Pakistan has been ruled by soldiers for nearly half of its life (here's the roll-call: General Ayub Khan, General Yahya Khan, General Zia-Ul-Haq, General Pervez Musharraf).
And finally ... well, finally, Pakistan is a nuclear nation. The world has never seen a failed nuclear state before - and there are real fears about what might happen if the country collapses into chaos.
Pakistan needs a lot of help from its friends these days - but don't be too surprised if you wake up in a few months' time to hear that, yet again, the army is back in charge in Islamabad.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~17~RS~)
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The time to have started worring about Pakistan was when it began its program to develop nuclear weapons. When the Taleban and al Qaeda finally take over Pakistan and get control over its nuclear arsenal, the world may wake up to the fact that it has made a huge blunder, just as it has in Iran, and just as it did during the re-arming of Germany under the Nazis. There is no doubt in my mind that when this happens, the messianic militant Islamic force will have no hesitation in using those weapons to further their announced aim of Talebanizing the entire world. They have no regard for any human lives including their own, their theological imperative their sole concern. Who would they attack first? America? Israel? India? Iran? Saudi Arabia? Russia? Europe? No way to know for sure. Or would someone become so alarmed at the possibility of being attacked that they would strike Pakistan pre-emptively with their own nuclear weapons? In the calculus of nuclear weapons, you cannot wait for the enemy to strike first because even one blow would have disastersous consequences for any nation and that includes the United States. If it is the US that is attacked, I predict the reaction will be swift, global, and world shattering. The US has been preparing for the contingency of a nuclear attack on its soil by terrorists since 9-11. Whatever the planned reaction, it is already in place and ready for execution.
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Robin,
I wonder how what proportion of the Pakistan or Afghanistan (or USA) population that desired death and martyrdom rather than life?
Some do, I am sure ,as some do in every nation, but generally very few. Some voice their desire (MA2), and others act out their fantasies (Lashkar-e-Taiba (or whoever) in Mumbai etc.) but the overwhelming majority strive for life for themselves and others.
This is not the place for a lesson in the history of the North West Frontier, but those bent on a mutually assured destruction should ask themselves the very simple question what will be left after the Nuclear war and how could what may be remaining be described as winning?
What is the point of Talibanisation of a lifeless cinder of a planet orbiting the sun, and indeed what is left after a genocidal pre-emptive nuclear attack that could result in the same outcome?
Only those who believe in life after death are possessed of the certainty that allows them to contemplate such stupidity. Only religion and its certainties lets both sides contemplate such stupidities from either the USA or Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iran. - let us all hope that in the end life is more attractive than death. No religion finally sees its triumph as death! (For one thing it very quickly dies out and the rest of us get on with life!)
My feeling is that we (the rest of the World), if we do anything, should concentrate on the education of moderate mullahs and encourage them to set up madrassas to teach the next generation of boys and girls that life is good and worthwhile. This seems a better way to spend our money than killing a few freedom fighters / terrorists and a large number of innocents.
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Robin Lustig:
I hope that the country of Pakistan will be able to start repairing the problems in the country...
-Dennis Junior
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Speaking about stupidity;
"My feeling is that we (the rest of the World), if we do anything, should concentrate on the education of moderate mullahs and encourage them to set up madrassas to teach the next generation ...blah blah blah."
The last guy who just tried to get the other sides story got his head cut off for it. JfH, carrying on the Neville Chamberlain tradition I see. Some people never learn.
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#4. MarcusAureliusII wrote:
in support of perpetual war (yet again). MA2 is as usual - wrong as is proven throughout recorded history.
MA2 seems unable to understand that wars end (mostly in defeat one way or other - particularly since 1945 for his country the USA) All his country's might and powerful weapons fail to win (if MA2 understands what 'win' means which from his writings I think that any reasonable person must doubt.)
MA2's position is that the only good Pakistani or Afghani is a dead one and reliogicidal (genocide of the adherents of a religion). MA2's philosophy is without doubt without any merit at all.
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JfH, your country is under attack. Not in the conventional sense of WWII but the people out to destroy Western civilization are no less determined or capable than Hitler and Stalin. That you refuse to see it or if you do, fight it is the kind of thinking that will result in your country, your continent losing. From the way its going, it's well on its way. When the result of that defeat and its inevitable ultimate final capitulation to militant Islam becomes inescapable, I don't want a tide of European refugees fleeing to my country to escape the consequences of one more of their interminable fatal follies.
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Marcus.
The problem with your argument, which is otherwise well made, is that you do not tell us how to identify the enemy. They do not wear uniforms, they are not a military force in the conventional sense and they do not abide by any standards that you or I would recognise as rules of engagement.
Soft targeting is the most insidious type of campaign. It strikes at the heart of western values by making even the pursuit of innocent pleasure dangerous. How long before someone lobs a bomb into a concert hall just for the hell of it? You cannot contain, because to do so would involve rounding up all Muslims into enclaves regardless of innocence or guilt and you cannot concede because that is simply to abandon our system of values because that is precisely what they would want and they would then have won.
There is only one way. Good intelligence and effective policing while you engage in a battle for hearts and minds. It will not be quick or easy but there is no other way. Yes there is a war going on but it is not against an identifiable enemy and it is not against an entire culture. To characterise JfH's approach as appeasement is not only intellectually unsustainable, it is gratuitously insulting.
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If you go around beating up little kids with a big stick year after year, beating them black and blue leaving a few permanently disabled, it's not surprising when some of them grow into adulthood, they come round your house one night and give you a good pasting.
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Yet another experienced officer joins the large group challenging the Afghanistan presence.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/4951560/SAS-chief-says-MoD-has-blood-on-its-hands.html
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threnodious, it is conceivable that one day in order to preserve anything of civilization, we may have to outlaw Islam. But maybe not everywhere just yet. In a one hour piece CNN did on Islamic extremism in Britain, it was demonstrated over and over and over again that law abiding Moslems in Britain not only pointed out the extremists to the authorities repeatedly but begged them to do something about it with no result. The government turned a deaf ear to them. I think this was produced after 7-7 but described events before and leading up to 7-7. By letting problems like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Londonistan fester, it only becomes harder and requires more drastic action once you finally are forced to deal with it. Europe has a propensity for ostrich-ism. Let's hope it's not too late to have no other recourse but to resort to complete nuclear cauterization of these cancers. There are stil plenty of people in Pakistan and Afghanistan who would rather live in the 21st century than the 11th.
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Marcus.
I notice that two British soldiers have now been murdered in Northern Ireland. If this signals a return to terrorism in that area, the UK will be fighting on two fronts and I am concerned that draconian measures will become more likely.
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#7. threnodio wrote:
I contributed to this blog (#2) to prevent anyone reading it from thinking that MA2's ideas were at all sensible - his/her ideas are seldom rational, supported by history or even well thought through.
He/she often writes at length but his ideas always lack much humanity and are always without question based solely on the basis that it is possible to win a war by employing more dastardly weapons of mass destruction (that his/her country sold to the enemy in the first place - see Iraq and Afghanistan) for longer than the other side.
He/she is constitutionally unable to understand peace at all. He/she also rants a lot and goes off at a tangent when cornered - all of this can be understood by tracking back through his/her postings.
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The question we can ask is "Will World War III start in Pakistan?
http://tinyurl.com/bvsxue
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I'm certain that the USA and other 'developed' nations (including Israel) were fully aware that Pakistan and India were developing these weapons. How they let an unstable Islamic extremist country like Pakistan have the weapon is beyond me. I wouldn't call India one of the most stable countries in the world either - especially when it comes to Kashmir.
When Pakistan and India both tested their nuclear weapons the USA was more concerned about Clinton's affair with one of his interns!
There must have been some sort of motive by the major powers to allow this to happen. Is it a 'thank you' to Pakistan by the US for its help against the Soviets in Afghanistan; and, for regional balance, allowed India to have them too?
It'll be the end for us all!
The only hope, as far as I can see, is multilateral nuclear disarmament between Pakistan and India. Maybe spend the money saved on eradicating poverty and education in those countries.
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As usual MarcusAurelius exaggerates to grab your attention. His contributions in the past show him to be quite intelligent and knowledgable on some topics but he has less knowledge than he pretends on some subjects. There is no possibility that al Qaeda much less the Taliban can take over Pakistan. Though unstable it is an exaggeration to suggest that Islamic radicals are in any position to take over the country. The real danger as it has always been is the possibility of war with India, Pakistan's mortal enemy. Both countries have formidable armies and air forces and are armed with nuclear weapons on long range missiles.
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