Posted on 04/22/2009 3:53:22 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
DAGGAR, Pakistan | Taliban militants have expanded their operations from the Swat Valley to Buner, an adjacent region they now control that is just 60 miles from the capital, Islamabad.
Young militants armed with automatic weapons freely patrol roads, while their superiors lead prayers in mosques, where they recruit other fighters to join their campaign to impose Taliban rule throughout Pakistan.
Pir Baba is one such mosque. Named after a revered Sufi saint from the region, an adjacent shrine used to be visited daily by worshippers from all across the country.
However, they are no longer allowed to visit the shrine because the Taliban say Pir Baba devotees were involved in un-Islamic practices.
The Taliban expansion to Buner and elsewhere in Pakistan is happening rapidly, well before the Obama administration can begin implementing its regional strategy that depends on the Pakistani government's willingness to fight the militants.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
btt
ping
Pakistan’s gonna fall to the Taliban and the world is just letting it happen. Despicable!
Paging the Indian defense ministry.....
It’s probably too late to defend Islamabad now, because no one exists to defend it. Certainly not the Pakistani military.
Thanks for the ping Vel.
The tolleebbonnn has a friend in the white house.
This is what I feared would happen when Musharraf was deposed from control. The new leadership is so liberalized and wussy - and the Tali saw it. Watch it expand into adjacent regions
Personally, I wouldn't participate in the defense of any place named "Islamabad" either.
On another thought: I don't think Pakistan can be defended from the Taliban. I think they're going to win. It's my feeling that the strange Obama MisAdministration doesn't care if they win. I bet they're hoping the Taiban win. And, I always thought that it was only a matter time before the Taliban turned they're attention to Pakistan proper. The maniacal Taliban/Al Qaeda alliance want the nukes.
I don't which is the bigger danger: The Taliban take over Pakistan, or Obama does something rash to show he's a tough guy.
This is a job for grown-ups and unfortunately, we don't have any in the White House.
I imagine the homeland threat level will be lowered to green any moment now. militant towel heads with nukes, no worries. white guys with bibles & guns, better open those fema camps.
There is almost no way this ends without losing one or more American cities. Only question is how soon and how many.
To completely secure the entire country (seven times the size of Iraq and more densely urban), you’d have to come up with 2-3 million troops to pacify it. And even if you got your hands on every single weapon, the raw materials, technology and scientists will scatter like candy out of a pinata.
Al Qaeda is on its way to birthing the nuclear caliphate.
http://www.ptinews.com/pti%5Cptisite.nsf/0/A1C7E3608771FFB2652575A0005E2FCF?OpenDocument
Mullen worried about Pak nukes if descent into chaos continues
Washington, Apr 22 (PTI) The US today expressed its concern over the safety of the nuclear weapons in Pakistan if the current “descent into chaos” continues there.
“In Pakistan, it’s a country that has nuclear weapons. My long-term worry is that descent, you know, should it continue, gives us the worst possible outcome there,” Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the NBC news in an interview.
He was asked: “Both Afghanistan and Pakistan are showing signs of descending into chaos. What is the real threat to the United States if this is not stopped?” However, Mullen who is currently in Afghanistan where the interview was recorded, said he is comfortable for now with the measures taken by Pakistan for safety of its nukes.
“Does the US have a plan to safeguard Pakistan’s nuclear weapons?” he was asked. “I wouldn’t go into any kind of detailed planning. I’m comfortable right now that the measures that the Pakistanis have taken in recent years provide adequate security,” Mullen said.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the al- Qaeda and the Taliban have now “merged” and are posing a very serious threat to the United States and its allies.
“The Taliban and al-Qaeda have, in ways, merged. So what was, a few years ago, sort of a separate fight is now merging,” he said adding, the threat from them is “very real”.
“I see intelligence routinely that indicates that al- Qaeda is plotting against the United States, against western interests,” he said. PTI
http://www.nationalpost.com/story-printer.html?id=1513235
Pakistan falling to pieces
(snipped)
“. . .it raises a terrifying possibility: that in this absurdly corrupt and mismanaged country, an otherwise unpopular Talibanstyle theocracy will manage to propel itself into power by piggybacking upon the rich litany of entirely secular grievances harboured by the nation’s downtrodden peasant class.
It’s a trick that would hardly be unprecedented: From the Bolsheviks in Russia, to the Taliban in Afghanistan, to Hamas in Gaza and the Khomeinists in Iran, history shows that the combination of an intensely radicalized vanguard (to borrow a favourite communist term) with an uneducated but umbraged political base can produce sudden, cataclysmic political change.
The Western world, including India, must be ready for this. Pakistan’s enormous internal problems — corruption on an epic scale, massive income inequality, an incompetent and obsolete military establishment still obsessed with the Indian threat, an intelligence service riven with Islamist sympathizers — are beyond our ability to change through our standard tools of democracy-building and foreign aid. But perhaps we can do something about the piece of the puzzle that affects the rest of the world most directly: Pakistan’s few dozen nukes. If the nation does indeed crumble into the hands of Medieval theocrats, we must be prepared to do what is militarily necessary to ensure those weapons are destroyed or disabled.
No one can be sure when or how the bumbling government of Asif Ali Zardari will fall. But whoever does replace him may make Mahmoud Ahmadinejad look reasonable by comparison. Let’s make sure the regime doesn’t have the tools to export death to the rest of the world on a scale not seen since the summer of 1945.”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/254/story/66368.html
Posted on Thu, Apr. 16, 2009
U.S. experts: Pakistan on course to become Islamist state
(snipped)
. . . “Pakistan has 173 million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of al Qaida sitting in two-thirds of the country which the government does not control,” said David Kilcullen, a retired Australian army officer, a former State Department adviser and a counterinsurgency consultant to the Obama administration.
“Pakistan isn’t Afghanistan, a backward, isolated, landlocked place that outsiders get interested in about once a century,” agreed the U.S. intelligence official. “It’s a developed state . . . (with) a major Indian Ocean port and ties to the outside world, especially the (Persian) Gulf, that Afghanistan and the Taliban never had.”
“The implications of this are disastrous for the U.S.,” he added. “The supply lines (from Karachi to U.S. bases) in Kandahar and Kabul from the south and east will be cut, or at least they’ll be less secure, and probably sooner rather than later, and that will jeopardize the mission in Afghanistan, especially now that it’s getting bigger.”
The experts McClatchy interviewed said their views aren’t a worst case scenario but a realistic expectation based on the militants’ gains and the failure of Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership to respond. . .
I agree. It’s which cities? And when?
You’ll want to see Gerald Posner’s read on this as well:
The Taliban’s Nuclear Threat [on verge of seizing Pakistan’s nukes]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2235591/posts
SNIPPET from your post no. 12:
““I see intelligence routinely that indicates that al- Qaeda is plotting against the United States, against western interests,” he said.”
Thanks for the pings.
Very vervous bump.
No idea about the location(s) besides NYC and DC (”just because”). Big cities for big body counts would be the preference. But the easiest target(s) of opportunity and the mode of entry (land, air, or sea) will determine the relative value of one target over another for them. They may try to disperse the arsenal across the caliphate as the situation plays out and additional nations begin to fall down the line.
I think that this might end up like a chess game where we are several moves away from checkmate but the pieces still have to play themselves out over some period of time. Things might actually get better before they get worse.
The worse this gets the more nervous we will get. And the more nervous we get the more nervous the Pak military gets (fearing intervention). That *may* work out for us in the short-term as the more paranoid they become over protecting the arsenal from us the more secure it will be from the militants.
But they will have to step into the vacuum and take power. That will place them in an untenable position. The military is the only thing that works in that country. But it is now a failing state. They could step in and take the reins directly before, but it may be a terminal case now. As the state fractures, the national institutions will start to fracture (i.e. ethnic/regional rivalries). They will try to find a way to unite the nation as a last-ditch measure to avoid disintegration, and will therefore seek to co-opt the revolution (as the Mensheviks tried with the Bolsheviks after ousting the Czar in 1917). We saw this during Mumbai last year as the military and Taliban moved towards a truce in the face of possible war with India.
There are already plenty of sympathizing factions in the military. These factions will gain ascendancy over the more moderate factions as the situation devolves. They will seek to unite the nation in jihad by provoking war with India and/or the US either directly attacking our forces or via a sponsored attack against civilians(nuclear 9/11 or Mumbai).
We will then play into their apocalyptic, self-fulfilling prophecy by our retaliation. But we will not be able to eliminate all the weapons/materials. And the survivors will unite under Umar or Usama under the black banners in Khorasan to march on Jerusalem with the entire Islamic world (i.e. coincidentally Jerusalem has been a consistent theme in recent months)
This regional unification will erase the “artificial lines” of Sykes-Picot and “the nine decades of humiliation” and rebirth the “caliphate” under Caliph Umar/Usama/Saad/etc and his/their nuclear arsenal parceled out across the region to defend against the “Crusader” onslaught.
Not sure how long this takes to play out (months, years, decades). But the script was written long ago.
And we are playing along.
” . . . All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies. This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.”
- - UBL 10/30/04
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1890027/posts?page=647#647
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1875105/posts?page=503#503
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1875105/posts?page=973#973
Admiral Mullen arrived in Islamabad late today for “scheduled” meetings with Pakistan government officials.
Good recap; thanks callmejoe.
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