The following article represents my long-held thoughts on the risk Pakistan poses.
The question is: If Islamo-fascists get control of Pakistan, what happens then?
I’d suggest that a full scale, and potentially nuclear, war with India is one possibility, not least because the long-standing enmity between the two nations makes it just about inevitable and because India can’t tolerate such a threat on its border. That risks drawing in Islamic nations in the region on Pakistan’s side, which throws open which nations support India and a question mark over China. Could be very interesting times which might have the potential to produce the biggest and most destructive international armed conflict since WWII.
West warned on nuclear terrorist threat from Pakistan
Paul McGeough
April 11, 2009The next few months will be crucial in defusing a global terrorist threat that would be even deadlier than the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, a leading Washington counter-terrorism expert warns.
David Kilcullen — a former Australian army lieutenant colonel who helped devise the US troop surge that revitalised the American campaign in Iraq — fears Pakistan is at risk of falling under al-Qaeda control.
If that were to happen, the terrorist group could end up controlling what Dr Kilcullen calls “Talibanistan”. “Pakistan is what keeps me awake at night,” said Dr Kilcullen, who was a specialist adviser for the Bush administration and is now a consultant to the Obama White House.
“Pakistan has 173 million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of al-Qaeda sitting in two-thirds of the country which the Government does not control.”
Compounding that threat, the Pakistani security establishment ignored direction from the elected Government in Islamabad as waves of extremist violence spread across the whole country — not just in the tribal wilds of the Afghan border region.
“We have to face the fact that if Pakistan collapses it will dwarf anything we have seen so far in whatever we’re calling the war on terror now,” Dr Kilcullen told The Age during an interview at his Washington office. Late last month, when US President Barack Obama unveiled his new policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, he warned that al-Qaeda would fill the vacuum if Afghanistan collapsed, and that the terror group was already rooted in Pakistan, plotting more attacks on the US.
As the US implements its new strategy in Central Asia, Dr Kilcullen warned that time was running out for international efforts to pull both countries back from the brink.
Special US Envoy Richard Holbrooke has been charged with trying to broker a regional agreement by reaching out to Iran, Russia and China. Dr Kilcullen spoke highly of Mr Holbrooke’s talent as a diplomat: "This is exactly what he’s good at and it could work.
“But will it? It requires regional architecture to give the Pakistani security establishment a sense of security, which might make them stop supporting the Taliban,” he said.
“The best-case scenario is that the US can deal with Afghanistan, with President Obama giving leadership while the extra American troops succeed on the ground, at the same time as Mr Holbrooke seeks a regional security deal.”
The worst case was that Washington would fail to stabilise Afghanistan, Pakistan would collapse and al-Qaeda would end up running what he called “Talibanistan”.
“This is not acceptable; you can’t have al-Qaeda in control of Pakistan’s missiles,” he said.
“It’s too early to tell which way it will go. We’ll start to know about July. That’s the peak fighting season and the extra troops will have hit the ground, and it will be a month out from the Afghan presidential election.”
Dr Kilcullen also cautioned Western governments against focusing too heavily on Afghanistan at the expense of the intensifying crisis in Pakistan, because “the Kabul tail was wagging the dog”. Contrasting the challenges in the two countries, Dr Kilcullen described Afghanistan as a campaign to defend a reconstruction program.
“It’s not really about al-Qaeda,” he argued. “Afghanistan doesn’t worry me. Pakistan does.”
However, he was hesitant about the level of resources and likely impact of Washington’s new drive to emulate the effectiveness of an Iraq-style “surge” by sending an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan.
“In Iraq, five brigades went into the centre of Baghdad in five months,” he said.
"In Afghanistan, it will be two combat brigades (across the country) in 12 months. That will have much less of a punch effect than we had in Iraq.
“We can muddle through in Afghanistan. It is problematic and difficult, but we know what to do. What we don’t know is if we have the time or if we can afford the cost of what needs to be done.”
Dr Kilcullen said that a fault line had developed in the West’s grasp of the situation on either side of the Durand Line, the long-disputed border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"In Afghanistan, it’s easy to understand, difficult to execute. But in Pakistan, it is very difficult to understand and it’s extremely difficult for us to generate any leverage, because Pakistan does not want our help.
"In a sense there is no Pakistan; no single set of opinion. Pakistan has a military and intelligence establishment that refuses to follow the directions of its civilian leadership.
"They have a tradition of using regional extremist groups as unconventional counterweights against India’s regional influence.
"The (Pakistani) military also has an almost pathological phobia by which it sees al-Qaeda as ‘this little problem’, as distinct from what they see as the main game opposing India.
"In terms of a substantial threat, Pakistan is the main problem we face today.
“We don’t have a responsible actor to work through in Islamabad. My judgement, to use diplomatic speak, is that Pakistan has yet to demonstrate genuine commitment.”
http://www.watoday.com.au/world/west-warned-on-nuclear-terrorist-threat-from-pakistan-20090413-a4ac.html
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