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  • Pakistan could become next US nightmare

    Pakistan could become next US nightmare

    December 30, 2006

    IT HAS more than twice as many people as Iran, six times more than Iraq, many primed for Islamic extremism by a legacy of poverty and illiteracy left by decades of misrule by corrupt secular leaders, civilian and military.

    It already has nuclear weapons, and ballistic missiles made with North Korean help. It shelters jihadists battling Western forces across its border, and fanatical cells training Muslim youth in Western countries to put bombs on buses and metros.

    If Iraq has turned into a nightmare for the US President, George Bush, think about Islamists gaining power in Pakistan, population 166 million, and their hands on its nuclear arsenal.

    Across the border in Afghanistan, 31,000 US, Canadian, European and Australian troops are fighting a resurgent Taliban in the country's south.

    The British-led forces can outbattle the Islamist fighters, but the constant fighting and presence of foreign troops is steadily undermining local support for the government of President Hamid Karzai. Frustratingly for the British and Afghan commanders, the Taliban are able to operate out of neighbouring Pakistan with little hindrance.

    The Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, is said to live in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's Baluchistan province, hold his "shura" or council meetings openly in the city, and train his fighters at two camps on the city's outskirts.

    Before an attack by 1500 Taliban fighters in early September, the Taliban streamed across the border into Afghanistan cheered on by Pakistani border guards.

    Pakistan's President and army chief, Pervez Musharraf, has been confronted several times this year, by Karzai, the British and the Americans, who have supplied addresses and phone numbers for Omar and his cohorts in Quetta.

    Musharraf throws up unconvincing bluster. He claims that Pakistan has done all it can to prevent cross-border military activity, with its army losing 750 killed in campaigns since September 11, 2001, along its frontier with Afghanistan.

    Yet Musharraf and his government are deeply ambivalent in their commitment to supporting the Western campaign, in return for which about $US4 billion ($5 billion) in US aid has flowed their way over the past five years.

    With the leaders of the country's two main secular parties, former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, in exile and opposing military rule, Musharraf relies on Islamists for domestic political support.

    Principal among these is the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, which explicitly supports the Taliban and reinforces it with recruits from its madrassas (Koranic schools), and which the Pakistan Army and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency helped join ruling coalitions in both Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier Province.

    As its founding patron, the ISI is said to be highly protective of the Taliban, keeping it in reserve in case Pakistan needs to regain control of its northern neighbourhood and transport corridors as "strategic depth" against India.

    Pakistan's security agencies have been more active against elements of the al-Qaeda hiding out in its cities, notably by capturing the group's No.3 figure, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, in March 2003 and handing him over to the Americans.

    But according to a new report by the International Crisis Group, the Brussels-based think tank headed by the former Australian foreign minister, Gareth Evans, the campaigns against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants operating into Afghanistan have failed.

    Pakistani authorities have flip-flopped between excessive force, stirring up more resistance in the fiercely independent border tribes, and appeasement.

    Accepting "empty pledges" from tribal maliks (headmen) to end attacks on Pakistani troops and curb foreign terrorists, Islamabad has effectively given the Taliban a free hand in this border region.

    Musharraf is trying to shore up an administrative system left by the British based on government political "agents" supervising the traditional maliks, while the Taliban's parallel authority is spreading to "settled" areas of the North-West Frontier.

    The "Talibanisation" of Pakistan itself is now a looming worry for the West.

    Soon after he seized power in 1999 - ahead of being sacked by Sharif - The Economist magazine called Musharraf a "useless dictator".

    Seven years later, he hangs onto power without having achieved much in the way of reform, largely because the US regards him as key to keeping the Islamists out of power.

    That is turning out to be another big misconception in Washington.
    http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/pak...895480059.html

    "primed for Islamic extremism", these words more or less sum up the precarious state of affairs in pakistan.
    Last edited by Lilo; 30 Dec 06,, 10:28.

  • #2
    The Sky is falling!

    Oh, no it isn't.

    My bad.

    So, Lilo, any comment on the article, or are you just trolling?




    zzzzzzzzzzz
    "We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way." -President Barack Obama 11/25/2008

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Lilo View Post
      "primed for Islamic extremism", these words more or less sum up the precarious state of affairs in pakistan.
      Bullcrap, thats what sums up that phrase.

      We have a lot more modern, progressive and liberal people in Karachi alone than all the Mullahs combined everywhere.

      But that doesn't mean that those Pakistanis won't whoop anyone's ass for messing with Pakistan.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by highsea View Post
        The Sky is falling!

        Oh, no it isn't.

        My bad.

        So, Lilo, any comment on the article, or are you just trolling?




        zzzzzzzzzzz

        I agree very much with the views of the article.


        Bullcrap, thats what sums up that phrase.
        We have a lot more modern, progressive and liberal people in Karachi alone than all the Mullahs combined everywhere.

        But that doesn't mean that those Pakistanis won't whoop anyone's ass for messing with Pakistan.
        Yes u might have had many liberal pakistanis before the regime of Zia but now they are a fast disappearing breed. Even the educated overseas pakistanis are turning into zealots as seen in various protests organised by them during the cartoon crisis.

        there is far more extremism nowadays in pakistan with 48.7% literacy rate than in 60's when their literacy levels were far lower.

        Comment


        • #5
          So long as the Army is in power, there was nothing to worry.

          The situation has turned.

          However, with Saddam's killing, the mood in Pakistan would not be too much in favour of the US and Musharraf will become a mere helpless spectator of events.

          I am not Moslem and I support the WoT. But if people want to prove they are congenital idiots and kill people (Saddam) they are afraid of and with a kangaroo court 'justice', then I am afraid it weakens tremendously the hands of those who support the WoT like me!

          We are helpless because there are so congenital idiots around who have no clue of international issues!

          And the situation becomes worse when weak justifications are bandied for killing Saddam and as weak as the the canard and lie that Iraq had WMD. Truth shall always triumph and propaganda will not wash!
          Last edited by Ray; 30 Dec 06,, 11:27.


          "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

          I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

          HAKUNA MATATA

          Comment


          • #6
            Well, it was close to a nightmare when they discovered AQ Khan's nuclear shop.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Lilo View Post
              I agree very much with the views of the article.




              Yes u might have had many liberal pakistanis before the regime of Zia but now they are a fast disappearing breed. Even the educated overseas pakistanis are turning into zealots as seen in various protests organised by them during the cartoon crisis.

              there is far more extremism nowadays in pakistan with 48.7% literacy rate than in 60's when their literacy levels were far lower.
              Again...

              What sort of liberalism do other countries have that Pakistan does not?

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              • #8
                >> Pakistan could become next US nightmare

                Correction: Pakistan could finally be discovered as the source of all US nightmares
                I rant, therefore I am.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Srirangan View Post
                  >> Pakistan could become next US nightmare

                  Correction: Pakistan could finally be discovered as the source of all US nightmares
                  @#$%!$!@$#%

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    So what will the US do, submit Musharraf to a court and hang him!
                    Break the temple, Break the mosque, Break whatever besides!
                    But do not break a human heart, because that is where the GOD resides!

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Srirangan View Post
                      >> Pakistan could become next US nightmare

                      Correction: Pakistan could finally be discovered as the source of all US nightmares
                      Another correction
                      "US has finally modified Pakistan into a so called US nightmare". ;)
                      Break the temple, Break the mosque, Break whatever besides!
                      But do not break a human heart, because that is where the GOD resides!

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Khan Sahab View Post
                        Another correction
                        "US has finally modified Pakistan into a so called US nightmare". ;)
                        Fair enough. But it is not US alone that has done the modifications, Saudi Arabia has had a huge part to play!
                        I rant, therefore I am.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Asim Aquil View Post
                          @#$%!$!@$#%
                          I rant, therefore I am.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Srirangan View Post
                            Fair enough. But it is not US alone that has done the modifications, Saudi Arabia has had a huge part to play!
                            and howz dat so?
                            Break the temple, Break the mosque, Break whatever besides!
                            But do not break a human heart, because that is where the GOD resides!

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Money, literature, ideology etc. etc.
                              I rant, therefore I am.

                              Comment

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