I know that many bloggers on the left have been ringing our alarm bells about Pakistan for awhile now.
Yet for years our government under President Bush assured us that Pakistan was one of our strongest allies in the “War on Terror.” Well, now David Kilcullen, a former top counter-terrorism adviser to General Petraeus (Bush’s hand picked general to lead US forces in Iraq and now head of CENTCOM) has joined those of us on the left who disbelieved the lies and deceptions of the Bush administration about the stability of Pakistan. Indeed, in a recent interview he said he believes Pakistan could collapse within six months.
Pakistan is 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the U.S. Army, and al-Qaeda headquarters sitting right there in the two-thirds of the country that the government doesn’t control. The Pakistani military and police and intelligence service don’t follow the civilian government; they are essentially a rogue state within a state. We’re now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state, also because of the global financial crisis, which just exacerbates all these problems. . . . The collapse of Pakistan, al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons, an extremist takeover — that would dwarf everything we’ve seen in the war on terror today.
Chilling. Pakistan is a country with nuclear weapons and ballistic missile delivery systems. Many in its its military and Intelligence Service (the infamous ISI) have deep and enduring ties to the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other radical Islamic terrorist organizations that have launched terrorist attacks against targets in India and Afghanistan (and, let us not forget, the US of A), too. Northwest Pakistan (a/k/a Waziristan) is completely dominated by such groups including the Taliban, and is the reputed hiding place of Osama Bin Ladin and his chief aides. Before President Musharraf was deposed and a democratically elected government restored to power, numerous assassination attempts against Musharraf were made by radical Islamist elements in the country, some of them members of the Pakistani military. Yet for eight years Bush and the Republicans (and a few Democrats still in Congress) ignored this obvious danger.
Just one more sign of how Bush has screwed up the world, not just America, by his insane/inane focus on Iraq and Iran after 9/11, when it was Pakistan all along which should have have been the clear point of emphasis of our foreign policy. Pakistan had the nukes, Pakistan had the terrorists and extremists. Iraq and Iran had nothing that posed an imminent threat to US interests or the security of our people. But then again, what would one expect from a man who invented the word “strategery” and who let himself be led around by the nose by Cheney and Rumsfeld?
Can this be fixed by Obama in 6 months? I highly doubt it. Pakistan’s military is obsessed with India, not with the insurgents, many of them groups which it developed and supported over the last 50 years. The Taliban after all, were essentially a creation of the INI. And the Taliban groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan are moving toward a unified front in opposition to the US.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — After agreeing to bury their differences and unite forces, Taliban leaders based in Pakistan have closed ranks with their Afghan comrades to ready a new offensive in Afghanistan as the United States prepares to send 17,000 more troops there this year.
To be blunt, we are running out of time. Time to prevent what may very well be the most serious geopolitical crisis we have faced since the Cold War. Obama has announced his own “new” approach to Pakistan, but I’m not sure anyone in Pakistan who counts has bought onto what he’s selling. There are grave doubts that what has been proposed by his administration so far will prevent the worst case: a rogue state possessing nuclear weapons, led by radical ideological religious extremists with ties to terrorists.
President Obama’s strategy of offering Pakistan a partnership to defeat the insurgency here calls for a virtual remaking of this nation’s institutions and even of the national psyche, an ambitious agenda that Pakistan’s politicians and people appear unprepared to take up.
Officially, Pakistan’s government welcomed Mr. Obama’s strategy, with its hefty infusions of American money, hailing it as a “positive change.” But as the Obama administration tries to bring Pakistanis to its side, large parts of the public, the political class and the military have brushed off the plan, rebuffing the idea that the threat from Al Qaeda and the Taliban, which Washington calls a common enemy, is so urgent. […]
General Petraeus, in Congressional testimony last week, called the insurgency one that could “take down” the country, which is home to Qaeda militants and has nuclear arms.
Even before the insurgency has been fully engaged, however, many Pakistanis have concluded that reaching an accommodation with the militants is preferable to fighting them. Some, including mid-ranking soldiers, choose to see the militants not as the enemy, but as fellow Muslims who are deserving of greater sympathy than are the American aims.
It is problematic whether the backing of Mr. Zardari, and the Obama’s administration’s promise of $1.5 billion in aid for each of the next five years, can change the mood in the country, said a former interior minister, Aftab Ahmad Sherpao, who visited Washington last fall to meet with some of the people who are now officials in the Obama administration. […]
Then there is India. Its growing presence in Afghanistan — the building of roads; the opening since 2001 of two consulates in two cities close to Pakistan — makes Pakistan believe it is being encircled, said Ishaq Khan Khakwani, a former senator from the Pakistan Muslim League-Q party. […]
The deep questioning about why the Pakistani Army should fight the Taliban reaches well down into the ranks of the soldiers and their families. Dissent on that goal has become increasingly prevalent among rank-and-file soldiers, and even in the officer corps, said Riffat Hussain, a professor of international relations at Quaid-i-Azam University here who also lectures to soldiers at the National Defense University.
There have been at least a half-dozen reported courts-martial of soldiers who refused to fight, and the real number was probably larger, Professor Hussain said.
In short, what Bush always claimed he was preventing in Iraq may very well come to pass because of his misguided policy of neglect toward the real threat to peace and stability in the region and the world: Pakistan. But what else is new. Bush was the CEO president, remember? And much like the CEO of our major financial institutions his arrogance and shortsightedness, and his basic belief in his own reckless policies (invading Iraq, demonizing Iran, attempting to put control of Middle Eastern oil resources in the hands of US and British oil companies) blinded him to the country which really posed the only serious threat to the United States, Europe and India. A country that trained, supported and now harbors the very violent ideologues who allied themselves with the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. A country slipping toward castastrophe, one we’ve been warned about quite recently by two prominent Senators, one a Republican and one a Democrat with expertise in foreign affairs and national security issues:
“We are running out of time to help Pakistan change its present course toward increasing economic and political instability, and even ultimate failure,” said a recent report by a task force of the Atlantic Council that was led by former senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. The report, released in February, gave the Pakistani government 6 to 12 months before things went from bad to dangerous.
It may very well be too late to prevent this disaster from erupting in Pakistan. And if Bush appointed generals like Petreaus and his counter-terrorism expert feel that way, shouldn’t the US, India and Europe be preparing for the worst case scenario? To paraphrase Richard Clarke, the “experts” are “running around with the hair on fire” telling anyone who will listen to them that Pakistan is a tinderbox and its fuse has already been lit. I sincerely hope someone on the Obama administration is paying attention. We already know what happens when a President and his team ignore warnings of an imminent threat to our national security.
