Finally, US officials admit Pakistan's failure inevitable

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http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/n...assess0417.html

Crumbling Pakistan Signals Danger

U.S. experts fear terrorist fiefdoms threaten security

By Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - A growing number of U.S. intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials have concluded that there's little hope of preventing nuclear-armed Pakistan from disintegrating into fiefdoms controlled by Islamist warlords and terrorists, posing a greater threat to the U.S. than Afghanistan's terrorist haven did before Sept. 11.

"It's a disaster in the making on the scale of the Iranian revolution," said a U.S. intelligence official with long experience in Pakistan who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

Pakistan's fragmentation into warlord-run fiefdoms that host al-Qaida and other terrorist groups would have grave implications for the security of its nuclear arsenal; for the U.S.-led effort to pacify Afghanistan; and for the security of India, the nearby oil-rich Persian Gulf and Central Asia, the U.S. and its allies.

"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."

The experts that McClatchy Newspapers 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.

That pessimistic view of Pakistan's future has been bolstered by Islamabad's surrender this week for the first time of areas outside the frontier tribal region to Pakistan's Taliban movement.

Many Pakistanis, however, dismiss such warnings as inflated. They think that the militants are open to dialogue and political accommodation to end the unrest, which many trace to the former military regime's cooperation with the U.S. after Sept. 11.

Ahsan Iqbal, a top aide to opposition leader and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said the insurgency can be quelled if the government rebuilds the judicial system, improves law enforcement, compensates guerrillas driven to fight by relatives' deaths in security force operations and implements democratic reforms.

"It will require time," Iqbal told McClatchy reporters and editors this week. "We need a very strong resolve and internal unity."

Oh, militants are open to dialog on the matter of "how fast will you hand over the country to them?" As far as "rebuilding judicial system" and "implementing democratic reforms", they're almost four decades late--and the law-enforcement situation is actually due to suppression of laws by same government.

Many U.S. officials, though, regard the civilian government of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari as unpopular, dysfunctional and mired in infighting.

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Pakistan won't collapse. Geez, I can't believe we're waiting on US intelligence to tell us, they have a long track record of being wrong.

[Saddle Bronc 124]

Pakistan won't collapse. Geez, I can't believe we're waiting on US intelligence to tell us, they have a long track record of being wrong.

You're right in a sense; the country will just revert to its "long-standing tradition" of military-tyranny.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Pakistan won't collapse. Geez, I can't believe we're waiting on US intelligence to tell us, they have a long track record of being wrong.

You're right in a sense; the country will just revert to its "long-standing tradition" of military-tyranny.

exactly... pakistan has always been 'stable' in that state. just not as a western democracy.