The black scenario of Pakistan

Forostar

Forostar

Ancient Mariner
So we thought Afghanistan is the country full of terrorists?

Let's focus on the country with the most terrorists per square meter:
What if the Pakistan army will loose the war against the Taleban, who are less than 100 km away from Islamabad?
Additional threats:

- Al-Qaeda might want to jump in too (more than now)
- Pakistan are most probably expanding their nuclear arsenal

If terrorists will take hold of that arsenal we can expect a mighty explosive atmosphere.

My take is that if the Pakistan army can't win, the USA will come over and will try to "get rid" of the bunch themselves, at all costs.
 
I think the Pakistani army can take care of this themselves, at least as long as the NATO forces are still putting pressure on the Taliban forces in Afghanistan. But I also think the West should be prepared to aid Pakistan in this conflict if they ask for it (but under no circumstances against the will of the Pakistani government). Remember that Pakistan has a big army, they are easily one of the top 15 military powers in the world.

The "best" thinkable scenario happens if the NATO/Afghan forces and the Pakistani army can both push Taliban north against the Chinese border. If the Chinese have these people on their doorstep, there will be no mercy. And stronger powers than Taliban have experienced how tough it is to fight wars on more than one front ...
 
I estimate the chance that Pakistan can do this themselves about 50%.

It was a naive move to give away land and freedom to the Taleban. As soon as they got it, they took the next part. They spread faster than the flu. We'll see if the change of "politics" is not too late.


edit: And the Pakistan government won't be taken serious if they can't solve these problems. So I repeat:
While NATO, the UN are debating and debating, the Americans will jump in no matter whoever will like it or not.
 
I think they have already shown determination. As soon as it became evident the Taliban would not stick to the deal, the government declared war and went after them with infantry, helicopters and planes. I'm sure they can at least prevent the fundies from taking over more land. I just hope this war will not end in disaster for the civilians in the area - it is not going to be a short war, I think that's evident from what we've seen in Afghanistan.

Regarding the US, one thing that supports your point is that president Obama has been more concerned about Pakistan than Bush Jr. was, but I still think he will try to cooperate with the Pakistani government. Imagine what damage it would do to the reputation of the US if they go into a war in Pakistan without the consent of the Pakistanis ... if there was hope for a better climate between the US and the Muslim world, that hope would be gone before you could say Allahu Akbar.
 
In regards to the Taleban, I'm marginally more optimistic than you guys. I don't think the Taleban have an interest in conquering and keeping all of Pakistan. To explain this, I will need to provide a bit of background.

Pakistan is not a homogenous country. There are several ethnic groups in the country. One of them is that of the Pashtunes, who live in the northwest of the country, bordering Afghanistan. The Pakistani-Afghani border was artificially created by the British and went straight through Pashto territory. "Afghani" is in fact the Persian word for "Pashto".

I know you are going to ask what all this has to do with the Taleban. The Taleban are Pashtunes -or Afghans- by definition. Their ideology is a mix of Pashto nationalism and the branch of Wahhabit Islam that is taught in Deoband, a Qur'an school (or madrasa) in India where many exiled Pashtunes sought spiritual refuge following the ongoing war in Afghanistan in the eighties and nineties. To the best of my knowledge, creating a worldwide Muslim theocracy was never on the Taleban's agenda, they only wanted to create a new Afghanistan according to their ideology. Since they are nevertheless Islamist extremists, their rule provided a safe haven for foreign Muslims, particularly al Qaeda which also follows the Deobandi ideology, to breed and grow.

So what I believe the Taleban are trying to do is to somehow establish a foothold in the Pashto territories in Pakistan, where they believe to be safer than in Afghanistan. The Pakistani government obviously does not want that, so they are fighting them. I'm sure that someone in that group will try to get their hands on Pakistan's nuclear arms, but nobody will allow that to happen. I can see India occupying Pakistan's nuclear facilities before the terrorists get their paws on them, since they would be the most threatened country if Pakistan should fall apart, which I wouldn't rule out. Even if the Taleban don't want to control all of Pakistan, others will. There is a pretty dangerous homegrown Islamist/terrorist movement in the country, and I think they are a bigger threat than the Taleban. They are the guys who killed Benazir Bhutto, after all. If you must have a buzzword, they have ties to al Qaeda.

To sum it up, I can see Pakistan falling apart, but I can neither see the Taleban themselves taking control of the entire country, nor can I see terrorists getting those bombs.
 
Perun said:
...I can neither see the Taleban themselves taking control of the entire country...
Click to expand...

If they can manage is debatable, but they really want to. Their leader has openly stated it.
 
I'm not even denying that, but I don't think they want to keep it. I believe they mostly want to annex the Pashto territories to form a "Greater Afghanistan".
 
I didn't mean to imply your said it. Good point to mention India, they will look at all this intensely, remembering the Mumbia attacks.

I think foreign forces will jump in...
 
I think your analysis of the situation is dead wrong.  First of all, the USA is willing to let the Pakistanis fight their own war against the Taliban.  NATO can't intervene (we can barely keep enough troops in Afghanistan), and the only way the US has sent forces/drones into Pakistan is in order to combat militias attacking in Afghanistan.  I just don't see how they would do a large deployment to fight the Taliban, considering their massive commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq currently.

The biggest threat is not that the Taliban or Al Qaeda through them gets their hand on nuclear weapons, which are quite securely guarded, but instead the threat is that they get their hands on nuclear material, leftovers from making weapons-grade plutonium, etc.  That could be used to make a very dangerous "dirty bomb".  If the Taliban or Al Qaeda did get their hands on it, and NATO found out where, I'd support sending in the SOPCOM boys and girls to get it back.

When it comes to India, Foro, I think they have been very cool about the situation.  To me, the attacks on Mumbai felt like they were designed to draw attention to Pakistan, possibly distract them from the Taliban.  Instead, India has done the right thing and not escalated the rhetoric too much between it and Pakistan.

Quite frankly, I just don't see where the troops to intervene in Pakistan would come from.
 
Yes, so the US is going to pick up its forces that are barely holding onto the Afghan situation, and move them to Pakistan, into a situation where the comparative number of troops would be closer to a drop in a hat?  That doesn't make any sense, politically or militarily.  Like I said, I can see Special Forces operations to deny the Taliban nuclear materials, or Special Forces ops on the border, precision strikes against the insurgents fighting into Afghanistan from the unsecured Pakistan areas on the border.  Beyond that, I see no political will to intervene in Pakistan.
 
The Taliban have taken hold of the Swat Valley, and control an area the size of the state of Connecticut, 60 miles outside of Islamabad. It is a very bad scenario, and I do not think the Armed Forces of the United States are going to intervene. We don't even know what kind of safe guards the Pakastanis have in place concerning their Nuclear Arsenal. I doubt the US Special forces would get any help from the Pashtun Tribes, if they decided to go in.
 
The Pakistanis have very good safeguards, according to interviews I have seen and some articles I have read, on their actual weapons, but not on their nuclear material not part of the weapons program.
 
Just to put this into relation: The news of the Taleban controlling the Swat Valley and being "only 60 or 100 miles from Islamabad" actually isn't as apocalyptic as it sounds at first. The Swat Valley is, in fact, a valley, and it's harder to get out of there than to get in.
 
Also, nuclear powers tend not to store their atomic weapons in major cities.  Because, you know, that makes them targets.
 
Yes, in the border region, they control a lot.  But what is in those regions?  Strategically, not very much, luckily.
 
Peshawar and the Khyber Pass are strategically important, but they are not under Taleban control.
 
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