Doomsday nation(Nuclear-armed and terrorist-riddled Pakistan is spinning out of control)

The Australian ^ | March 05, 2009 | Sally Neighbour

[sukhoi-30mki]

Doomsday nation

Nuclear-armed and terrorist-riddled Pakistan is spinning out of control,

writes Sally Neighbour

March 05, 2009

IN 1994 a group of religious students from a madrassa in Kandahar banded together to take on the vicious warlords who then ran southern Afghanistan. About 30 young men with 16 rifles stormed a military camp where two girls were being held and raped, rescuing the girls and hanging the camp's commander from the gun barrel of a tank, or so the story goes.

Thus began the movement known as the Taliban, from the word talib, meaning student. As Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid wrote in his seminal book, Taliban: "They saw themselves as the cleansers and purifiers of a guerilla war gone astray, a social system gone wrong, and an Islamic way of life thathad been compromised by corruption and excess."

Within months, 12,000 volunteers had joined the new organisation.

The Taliban would likely have been just another in the plethora of Afghan militias scrabbling for power except that it found itself a powerful sponsor in the government and military establishment of neighbouring Pakistan. Keen to have a biddable ally in Kabul, Islamabad provided the weapons, ammunition, funding and logistical support that enabled the Taliban -- "our boys", as Pakistan's interior minister famously called them -- to seize power and rule Afghanistan for five years.

But the forces of militancy unleashed more than a decade ago in Afghanistan are surging back across the border to swamp Pakistan itself. A full-blown insurgency is raging in the North-West Frontier Province and spreading to the main cities, and the country's powerful security forces seem impotent to stop terrorist atrocities such as Tuesday's attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore that have seen the country branded as the new epicentre of global terrorism.

[gracesdad]

This, not Iraq, should have been our focus all along. Yeah, it’s good that Sadaam is gone, but he was an angel compared to what could happen in this region.

[MyTwoCopperCoins]

"The roots of this transnational crisis stretch back more than a century to when Pakistan was part of the British Indian empire, or Raj, that sprawled across the subcontinent. Repeated attempts by the British to extend their dominion into Afghanistan failed, as they were fought off by the fearsome Pashtun warriors whom no invader before or since has been able to subdue. The British finally conceded defeat and in 1893 drew a line on a map to divide their territory from Afghanistan's. The enduring problem with this arbitrary border was that it cut straight through the middle of the lands known as Pashtunistan, the harsh mountain terrain inhabited by tribal Pashtuns, who number about 40 million and are renowned for their fierce independence, elaborate hospitality and ferocious fighting skills. The British knew they could never conquer the Pashtuns, so in 1901 they carved out a separate realm called the North-West Frontier Province and gave the Pashtuns almost total autonomy in seven tribal agencies strung along the border.

For more than a century the Pashtuns were left largely to themselves, forming the world's largest autonomous tribal society, run by local jirgas (councils) according to an honour code called pashtunwali, which prizes courage, chivalry, hospitality and patriotism, and deems that "women belong in the house or the grave", in the words of a Pashtun proverb. The agencies were closed to strangers and guidebooks warned tourists that in the tribal lands: "Pakistani laws don't apply and the Pakistani government has no authority whatever."

The status of Pashtunistan was never resolved and spurred repeated uprisings and border clashes. To this day the Afghan Government refuses to recognise the so-called Durand Line (named after the Raj's foreign secretary Mortimer Durand), claiming the Pashtun lands are rightfully part of Afghanistan, and Pashtun leaders on both sides simply ignore it."

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"This, not Iraq, should have been our focus all along."

So you are advocating that we should invade Pakistan? Please elaborate because this article clearly talks about how the Taliban and Al Queada have been chased across the border into Pakistan to further destabilize it. Which is the dilemna. It's not as cut and dried as Iraq was. Don't use Democratic talking points on this site. It doesn't really work because you have to actually defend them.

[jonascord]

Sorry, but since I live in Oklahoma, in the country, if Pakistan jumps off the diving board, and nukes India, or New York, (either of which would be, I suppose, a Bad Thing) I can't see a real down side.

Let me explain.
If India is hit, they WILL respond, and Pakistan will be a smoking hole. Millions of crispy madrahssa students, Holy war between Vishnu and Allah. The US on the Side Lines, clucking and seeking dialog.
New York gets hit. 10 million socialist voters vanish. Maybe a few senators, (if we are lucky. We can always make senators.). Obama declares martial law in another power grab, nationalizes the Nation of Islam as a civilian security force, we get to shoot them, Obama overthrown, return to a Constitutional Republic...

I'm looking at mostly plusses, here.

[gracesdad]

Sorry, but IMO — note I said IMO — Iraq will end up being one of the largest foreign policy blunders ever made by the U.S. (depending on the size of the blunders Obama makes). We will be there for decades.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

We’ve been in Korea for close to 60 years. Was that a huge foreign policy blunder? Because by the end of Obamessiah’s first (and only I hope I hope) we will have far less military personnel in Iraq than in Korea. This may already be the case. As of right now, the enemy is all but wiped out. Question, when was the last time you heard about the death count in Iraq? It’s not reported because it keeps shrinking. In a year, it will probably be at 0.

[mojitojoe]

Millions of crispy madrahssa students
______________
That can’t happen, those are zer0’s fellow classmates.

[Tulsa Ramjet]

Yeah. Your right. talibs were on the verge of acquiring WMD......give me a friggin break. saddam should have been taken out in 1991. We fought him twice.

Its NOT Afghanistan....its Pakistan thats the problem (aka nukes).

[swarthyguy]

I LOVE a positive headline.

Karma can be sublime, what with dharma, the JihadZilla Pakistan’s Elites have encouraged, tolerated and unleashed (wittingly or not :) is now in Lahore!

Heck, I might skip beer and go for champagne!

[Jack of all Trades]

And you are privy to the former administrations real strategic priorities and tactics, how? You know in detail what really transpired?

We sure seemed to have some real powerful leverage with Pakistan under Bush that has been completely blown away by Barky and the loose lipped Dems. There was speculation that we controlled their nuclear forces. We operated bases inside the country. We have one to two divisions to the North and three to four to the East in Iraq. All conveniently located near Syria, Iran, and a host of ‘Stans.

Rather than a blunder, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were master strokes of real world diplomacy. The world knows that if the U.S. gets sucker punched, somebody is going down hard. We've reordered the Middle East, and freed millions. On top of all that, the fall of the Soviet Union virtually guaranteed a U.S. move into the Middle East regardless of the party in power.