So far, the Obama administration has been blessed with a relatively calm set of foreign policy challenges, but that may be changing in Pakistan.
LAHORE, Pakistan – Pakistan’s opposition leader defied house arrest on Sunday to join anti-government protests that quickly descended into violence and chaos, with running battles between stone-throwing protesters and police.
The power struggle between Pakistan’s president and the opposition leader Nawaz Sharif threatens to paralyze the government and, alarmingly for the U.S., distract the nuclear-armed country from its fight against Taliban militants operating along the Afghan border.
Hundreds of police surrounded the Lahore residence of Sharif, a former prime minister, before dawn on Sunday and detained him along with scores of his supporters, a party spokesman said.
Officers in the eastern Pakistani city showed party officials an order placing Sharif and his politician brother Shahbaz under house arrest for three days, spokesman Pervaiz Rasheed said.
Sharif denounced the order as illegal and later left the house in a convoy of vehicles packed with chanting, flag-waving supporters, headed for a downtown rally that had already turned violent.
Not only that, but American interests are directly threatened.
Suspected militants attacked a transport terminal in northwestern Pakistan used to supply NATO troops in Afghanistan before dawn on Sunday and torched dozens of containers and military vehicles, police said.
We should definitely keep our eye on events as they develop in Pakistan. Instability there is likely to create Obama’s first serious foreign policy challenge.
