Pakistan Fallout. That’s Not A Pun.
Pakistan is getting a taste of its own medicine. Remember the “madrassa” attack some weeks back where about 80 militants were killed at a so-called “religious school”? It now looks like they really were militants after all and not the innocent civilians the local residents always claim. In fact, it looks like they were Taliban. The original excuse given by the Pakistani government was that they were Al Qaeda.
“A suicide attack at the Pakistan’s main army training base killed at least 35 soldiers Wednesday, the military said, and suspicion fell on pro-Taliban militants who had vowed revenge for a deadly helicopter attack on an Islamic school last month.”
Pakistan is the home of the Taliban. The Taliban originated there and is supported by the majority of the people there, which puts the government in a tight position. Pakistan gets a lot of US support and has to make some effort to hold back the Talibans repeated attack forays into Afghanistan. So the Pakistani military has been waging a campaign to clear pro-Taliban militants from the border region, which is used as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan.
Now, bombing the Taliban under the excuse that they thought it was Al Qaeda has brought retaliation. Pakistani President Musharraf is trying to hold on to power by maintaining an alliance with the US in the face of growing internal aggression and discontent. He does the least he can to stay on the good side of the US. At the same time, his regime is proliferating nuclear weapon technology among the Arab nations and harboring and nurturing the Taliban which continues to launch terror attacks in Afghanistan. If the Taliban turns on Pres. Musharraf in a big way, he’ll be out and Pakistan will swing all the way over to being a fundamentalist Islamic state.
Adding to the pressure, Pakistan is now coming under attack from Afghanistan instead of just the other way around. Last week, a car bomb ripped through the office of the inspector general of police in Quetta, the capital of southwestern Pakistan, and Afghan operatives are suspected in that and other recent bomb attacks.
This whole situation is a huge mess because Pakistan is run as much by powerful tribal leaders as it is by a central government and it has nuclear weapons and is mostly fundamentalist Islamic with the Taliban one of the dominant forces. If Musharrafs government falls, all hell could break loose between India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. A nuclear conflict would likely bring in China against India, while Iran might find it timely to make some aggressive moves of its own.
Big wars often start in small countries. This one bears close watch.