Posted by
Christopher on Thursday, February 07, 2008 11:10:28 AM
Pakistan is not doing enough. They are proving not to be an ally of the United States. They have enough nuclear material for up to 50 warheads. There is also strong evidence that some in the government are sharing that technology with others. Elections are coming up (allegedly) on Feb. 18. Al-Qaeda and pals are there and are exerting strong influence (in addition to their standard kidnap and murder tactics). Things could go to hell there very quickly. Perhaps you have heard of a part of Pakistan called Waziristan? A top al-Qaeda leader was just killed there by an American drone, but we have no “boots on the ground” there (possibly small numbers of special forces only). Pakistani leader Musharraf said this month, “we are not chasing bin Laden”. He will not welcome “assistance” in getting him either: “"Nobody will come here until we ask them to come and we haven't asked them". But we must understand this is not a new problem. Here is a highly relevant piece from http://claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1507/article_detail.asp (emphasis mine):
Lord Curzon, Britain's viceroy of India and foreign secretary during the initial decades of the 20th century, once declared:
“No patchwork scheme—and all our present recent schemes...are mere patchwork—will settle the Waziristan problem. Not until the military steam-roller has passed over the country from end to end, will there be peace. But I do not want to be the person to start that machine.”
Nowadays, this region of what is today northwest Pakistan is variously called "Al-Qaedastan," "Talibanistan," or more properly, the "Islamic Emirate of Waziristan." Pakistan gave up South Waziristan to the Taliban in Spring 2006, after taking heavy casualties in a failed four-year campaign to consolidate control of this fierce tribal region. By the fall, Pakistan had effectively abandoned North Waziristan. The nominal truce—actually closer to a surrender—was signed in a soccer stadium, beneath al-Qaeda's black flag.
Having recovered the safe haven once denied them by America's invasion of Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and the Taliban have gathered the diaspora of the worldwide Islamist revolution into Waziristan. Slipping to safety from Tora Bora, Osama bin Laden himself almost certainly escaped across its border. Now Muslim punjabis who fight the Indian army in Kashmir, Chechen opponents of Russia, and many more Islamist terror groups congregate, recuperate, train, and confer in Waziristan. This past fall's terror plotters in Germany and Denmark allegedly trained in Waziristan, as did those who hoped to highjack transatlantic planes leaving from Britain's Heathrow Airport in 2006. The crimson currents flowing across what Samuel Huntington once famously dubbed "Islam's bloody borders" now seem to emanate from Waziristan.
Slowly but surely, the Islamic Emirate's writ is pushing beyond Waziristan itself, to encompass other sections of Pakistan's mountainous tribal regions—thereby fueling the ongoing insurgency across the border in Afghanistan. With a third of Pakistanis in a recent poll expressing favorable views of al-Qaeda, and 49% registering favorable opinions of local jihadi terror groups, the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan may yet conquer Pakistan. Fear of a widening Islamist rebellion in this nuclear-armed state was General Musharraf's stated reason for the recent imposition of a state of emergency. And in fact Osama bin Laden publicly called for the overthrow of Musharraf's government this past September. It is for fear of provoking such a disastrous revolt that we have so far dared not loose the American military steamroller in Waziristan. When Lord Curzon hesitated to start up the British military machine, he was revolving in his mind the costs and consequences of the great 1857 Indian "Mutiny" and of an 1894 jihadist revolt in South Waziristan. Surely, Curzon would have appreciated our dilemma today.
But none of our decisions can be made out of fear. Will it take another attack on our homeland for us to deal with Pakistan? I sure hope not.