Judging by news reports the situation in Pakistan is seemingly becoming more precarious with some believing it’s not a matter of if but when Pakistan collapses under the threat of the fundamentalist Taliban and their allies. It seems the Pakistani Government was ill-advised at best and naive at worst in brokering a peace deal with the Taliban over the Swat Valley – formerly a tourist mecca filled with ski resorts and called “the Switzerland of Pakistan”, just 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad. What’s followed has been a series of abuses and injustices under the guise of Sharia Law and an emboldened Taliban who have increasingly come to believe that they can take on and defeat Pakistani forces and in doing so gain more land and power within the nation – now almost within sight of their main goal, the capital Islamabad. And, lately it seems that they have been largely successful – despite Army offensives – in doing so.
Photograph depicting a girl being held down and flogged by 3 men in the Swat Valley as punishment for her perceived 'crime'
What’s at stake is too scary to imagine. You’re looking at the sixth most populous nation on Earth with the second largest Muslim population behind Indonesia already in possession of up to 100 nuclear warheads. A nation strategically located in Southwest Asia, next to India to the east, China to the north and Afghanistan and Iran to the northwest and west. Pakistan has long had to deal with fundamentalist minorities within the population, particularly in the North-West Frontier Province and Provincially Administered Tribal Areas, which have long been hotbeds of fundamentalism with loose Government control and known to have housed and sheltered Islamic fundamentalists and militants such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The nation has long clashed with India – three major conflicts have been fought between the two since 1945 – where a shaky peace holds but, should the Taliban gain control, this fragile peace would almost certainly be broken in probably the most violent of fashions.
So, why hasn’t Pakistan done enough in the past to adequately address this problem? Well, it seems to be a case of Pakistan not having enough of any or all of the following: resources, intelligence, conscience, support, courage, stamina and know-how to adequately tackle the problem of fundamentalists within the nation, particularly along its western and northwestern fringes. The result of which has led us to now where if the worse case scenarios are to be believed, we could be just days away from a full-scale civil war and possibly weeks away from nuclear warheads being under the control Islamic fundamentalists.
That’s why the stakes are so high in Pakistan – stakes that make Afghanistan and Iraq pale into insignificance – and why the Governments of the US, India, Russia, Europe and China should be doing all they can to assist the Pakistani Government and its military in its time of need as the risk of this country collapsing under the weight of fundamentalism is a scary prospect indeed and would have widespread and almost instanteous ramifications worldwide, particularly across the Middle East and Indian sub-continent.
Let’s hope Pakistan can get its house in order for there is an awful lot at stake should they fail to do so.
Posted by elcanguro76 
