Pakistan nearing collapse, Taliban takeover?

Wouldn't surprise me at all. The loonies were given lots of latitude in both Pakistan and Afghanistan by their allies in the old Zia military regime, a policy which has continued to the present day, and now it's coming home to roost.<blockquote>The move by Taliban-backed militants into the Buner district of northwestern Pakistan, closer than ever to Pakistan's capital of Islamabad, have prompted concerns both within the country and abroad that the nuclear-armed nation of 165 million is on the verge of inexorable collapse.

On Wednesday a local Taliban militia crossed from the Swat Valley — where a February cease-fire allowed the implementation of strict Islamic, or Shari'a, law — into the neighboring Buner district, which is just a few hours drive from Islamabad (65 miles, separated by a mountain range, as the crow flies). . . .

David Kilcullen, a counter-terrorism expert for both the Bush and the Obama administrations, warned that Pakistan is on the brink of collapse. "Afghanistan doesn't worry me," Kilcullen said in an April 12 interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. "Pakistan does. We have to face the fact that if Pakistan collapses it will dwarf anything we have seen so far in whatever we're calling the war on terror now."

During an April 16 conference in Tokyo to raise donations for his beleaguered nation, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari warned that terrorists operating in the country posed a global threat.</blockquote>http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1893370,00.html?xid=rss-topstories-cnnpartner

Time had another good report on the Pakistan/Taliban situation a few weeks ago: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1887969,00.html

Does anybody here need to be reminded that Pakistan has nuclear weapons?

 

Yikes, Obama has his work cut out for him here. Few places more potentially volatile than the India-Pakistan region.

 

And it's all Obama's fault. Because everything was perfect there until three months ago.

 

Good thing Pakistan doesn't have nukes.

Shit!

 

This is serious shit. Good to see people can still be message-board douchebags about it.

 

To Pallister's credit, I don't think he was implying that. He's right. Pakistan's going to be a massive pain in the ass to deal with.

 

Thanks. I mentioned Obama only because he's the president, and this could turn out to be a much bigger challenge than anything he'll face domestically, or internationally for that matter. That region is the definition of a powder keg.

 

Several questions:

-- How is Pakistan's much-more-considerable-than-Afghanistan middle/upper class going to take to potential Taliban hegemony? It's easy to think of Pakistan as a backwater, but there's areas of that nation that have been much more thoroughly modern for a much longer period of time than any part of Afghanistan is/was. There are plenty of Pakistani's who do not see eye-to-eye with the Taliban.

-- How is India going to take this? Their history is long and contentious, not to mention the recent Mumbai attacks.

-- How will China react? This puts an potentially unstable tinderbox into their court too. Much of western China has a considerable Muslim population.

 

Did I really need the blue fucking font?
Not being a message-board douchebag about it. But it's going to be spun into his fault, when it isn't. As as said on another thread, Obama's early watershed is going to be foreign policy/diplomacy.
Yeah, this is scary shit. And you aren't going to negotiate with the taliban and sure as hell aren't going to negotiate when they have nukes.
It's North Korea with nothing to lose.

 

I'm going to die as a result of what's being talked about in this thread, aren't I?

 

Not necessarily... but once the cloud drifts this way, the radiation poisoning will make you sicker than shit.

 

Well THERE'S the silver lining.