Pakistan Is (A BIG) Part of the Problem--

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is most assuredly not part of the solution.

How's that again? Pakistan is our partner in the Global War on Terrorism. It is the key to defeating Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Right. Sure. So the current administration has said--repeatedly.

The happy talk out of the White House and other areas of D.C. are in the same league of accuracy as assurances more than five years ago that the Iraqis would welcome the US led invasion in the same way as the French welcomed the Liberation of Paris. Positive sentiments about Pakistan are signs of neocon ninny wishful thinking--not information. Not intelligence (in either the strategic/political sense or as applied to human thinking.)

The new, democratically elected civilian government of Pakistan is the process of acknowledging the existence of a Sharia based, Taliban controlled mini-state within the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP.)

This is the first step on a very slippery slope. The fall of the first domino.

Yes. The Geek is invoking the Domino Theory. While it was never true in the days of our wars in Southeast Asia, it has a genuine power today.

Walk it though with me.

The often stated goal of the Taliban in the NWFP and FATA is the creation of a truly Islamic government in which all aspects of Sharia are completely, fully imposed. Check out the following site regarding this. http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD193308.

A nearly seventy-five percent majority of Pakistanis outside the NWFP and FATA support the imposition of Sharia throughout the country. That's right, three out of four Paks want Sharia.(http://www.terrorfreetomorrow.org/upimagestft/TFT%20Pakistan%20Poll%20Report.pdf) Note that the support has been steady over time--although this earlier poll doesn't have solid numbers. (http://www.terrorfreetomorrow.org/upimagestft/Pakistan%20Poll%20Report.pdf)


The Pakistani politician Asif Ali Zardari has argued that his country and the US share "common values" (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/may/29/it-is-time-for-reconciliation-zardari-says/.) In the Geek's estimate Zardari must have been consuming one or another of Afghanistan's most popular commodities when he said that.

Nothing could be further from the core values of the US than Sharia. Not only does Sharia--and Islam--reject the separation of religion and state which is fundimental here, it defines crimes and punishments that revolt most Americans.

Right now, even before the formation of the Islamist Ministate of FATA and NWFP, Pakistan uses Sharia and has a Sharia component of its Federal judiciary. The powers of the Sharia courts are impressive. (http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/constitution/part7.ch3a.html.)

It is the Sharia aspect of Pakistani law which has resulted in both torture and death sentences for offenses against the dignity of Islam--or at least being a non-Muslim. Check it out for yourself. The Geekmo has limited himself to a couple of representative examples. You can find more on your own.

(http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=8855&size=A
http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/apro/aproweb.nsf/pages/appeals_pakistan_ASA330122007)

The spreading of Sharia from the emerging Islamist ministate, which is not only the stronghold of Taliban but the most probable hiding place for Osama bin Ladin and the rest of the al-Qaeda command and control echelon, to all of Pakistan will prove as hard as getting water to flow downhill.

Now it is important to remember that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a nuclear power and did not sign the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. As of now, the Pakistanis have generated enough fissionable material to make sixty or so atomic weapons. This is a conservative estimate.(http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/feb03/southAsia2.asp)

Get a grip on Taliban's position regarding the use of nuclear weapons. Watch the clip. It's scary.(http://www.memritv.org/en/1778.htm) The Pakistani Taliban chieftain states the bomb is needed to use against Islam's enemies, "the Jews and the Christians." This is pretty specific. Taliban is not fighting the US because of American policies. It is fighting as Muslim against non-Muslim. Period.

Perhaps it is this Taliban stance considered with the not-far-off Islamic success in capturing the levers of power in Pakistan that encouraged Iran's Maximum Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, to say last Friday that "terrorists" would soon acquire nuclear weapons. Even the gentle, multiculturally oriented New York Times acknowledged the Ayatollah's remark albeit in the last line of their story. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/world/middleeast/04iran.html?ref=middleeast.)

Even without the nuclear dimension, the Islamic ministate in FATA represents a threat to the US. Admiral Micheal Mullen made that clear during his current meeting with Pakistani defense chiefs. He also made it plain that the US would do nothing unilaterally or preemptively regarding the any action emerging from the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. See
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-uspak11-2008jun11,0,1456865.story. A different framing comes from Pakistan. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C06%5C11%5Cstory_11-6-2008_pg1_4

The inhibiting reality?

Admiral Mullen is nothing if not realistic. Any significant US action is precluded by the "instability" of the current Pakistani government. Of course, the word "instability" is both a monumental understatement and a codeword. (It is a codeword for "looming Islamist takeover.) Any action which resulted in more than a handful of dead bodies littering the rocky landscape of the FATA would result in a strengthening of the Islamist position in Pakistan.

The US is in a very sticky wicket in Pakistan. While the US government has been aware for decades about the Islamist orientation of the Pakistani people as well as critical elements of the Pakistani military and intelligence service, it has chosen to ignore the long term implications of the linkage between Islamism and threats to the US and other Western governments.

It is no longer possible to ignore Islamist Pakistan. The democratically elected parliament has called for an "international death penalty" for "blasphemy" against Islam. Blasphemy such as Danish cartoons and Dutch Internet videos. See http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C04%5C16%5Cstory_16-4-2008_pg7_6.

Backing this action, the Pakistani government, as previously posted, sent a high level delegation to meet with the European Union and demand an end to free speech under the threat of further terrorism directed against the EU member countries' embassies. The Pakistani ambassador to Norway has joined the threat brigade. (http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2008/06/norway-caricature-terror.html.)

In this fine piece of public diplomacy, the ambassador joined with his colleague in Copenhagen. See, http://www.cphpost.dk/get/107528.html.

Talk about blaming the victim!

The mess in Pakistan illustrates several critical lessons not yet learned by the US government or We the People. We damn well better learn them before time runs out.

First, be careful who you unthinkingly climb in political bed with. The Law of Unintended Consequences will apply sooner or later.

Second, small problems on the edge of what promises to be an easy war grow quickly into very large, nearly unsolvable ones. Again, the Law of Unintended (or Unforeseen) Consequences will apply--more likely sooner rather than later.

Third, know your enemy. You are more likely to be killed by the unknown enemy than the one you know.

It may be too late for the brain dead neocon rump of the current administration to learn these critical lessons. It is not too late for We the People to demand that the next administration demonstrate during the campaign that it has learned the lessons and will act appropriately upon them.