The Pakistani Stumbling Block

Campus Report ^ | July 21, 2008 | Rachel Paulk

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The Pakistani Stumbling Block

by: Rachel Paulk, July 21, 2008

The largest obstacle facing the NATO troops in Afghanistan is Pakistan. Afghanistan’s most volatile area is its porous northeastern border with Pakistan because the mountainous terrain prohibits enforcement of a secure border between the two countries. This terrain also provides safe breeding ground for the terrorist organizations forced to relocate. Osama bin Laden hid in this area following the Taliban’s removal from serious control of the country after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

On the other side of the border, Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) contains poor ethnic tribes which the Pakistani government was incapable of assimilating into its semi-regulated society. The Pashtun ethnic group claims most of the land surrounding the border, and as a result the Pashtun people are heavily recruited by Islamic extremist groups utilizing the FATA area, as it’s out of the NATO troops’ jurisdiction. Thomas Johnson, Research Professor in the Department of National Security Affairs and Director of the Program for Culture and Conflict Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School, and M. Chris Mason, Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies and a previous political officer on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, wrote in their report “No Sign until the Burst of Fire” that “…the Pashtun borderlands have become a safe haven for the Taliban and other insurgent and terrorist elements.” The Taliban isn’t the only radical group hiding in the region; pockets of Al-Qaeda splinter cells are also purported to inhabit the FATA.

The Pashtun people are largely uneducated and widely impoverished, key factors targeted by jihad-minded extremist recruiters, and their efforts have proven successful...