You’re a feudalistic society that did not adapt particularly well to democracy. You still call yourself a democracy even though the political scene is dominated by old-world family dynasties who keep power by making unholy alliances with some pretty unsavory militant fundamentalists. You deny a class system that truly dominates your entire nation, and the lower-class – and very hopeless – masses really hate the rich and a modern universe that they cannot afford to live in, seeking sanctuary in a religious belief that (1) battles the incumbent and modern forces that keep them down in this world and (2) promise a next world that will make it all better. The side channel of remotely possible upward mobility – the military – is increasingly dominated by officers who defied the odds and rose from the dregs of society to power positions atop this well-armed force… but still harbor hostility to modernity (except for the beautiful weapons that modernity brought), the Western world and the old powerful families. Wouldn’t look too good in a tourism brochure, but let’s face it, tourism (versus “terrorism”) is not a serious economic factor in Pakistan.
Pakistan has enough nuclear warheads (over 60-70) effectively to destroy the entire United States if somehow these WMDs could be “delivered” to the relevant targets. The father of their nuclear program, Dr. A.Q. Khan, is no longer under house arrest for having delivered the technical specs for constructing the components (like exceptionally complex centrifuges to separate out the fissionable plutonium) of a nuclear program to nations like Iran and North Korea. And Pakistan is ripped apart by military Islamists – ranging from indigenous Taliban hell-bent on taking over the entire country including those yummy nukes (a slightly different group than the ones hell-bent on toppling the Afghani government) to factions content to carve out their government-protected niches within the existing governmental structure. Pakistan simply does not work, seemingly ripe for a political explosion that would reshape the power in this region in a way that cannot serve U.S. interests.
And since stuff doesn’t work in Pakistan, guess who’s to blame? The May 25th New York Times: “Conspiracy theory is a national sport in Pakistan, where the main players — the United States, India and Israel — change positions depending on the ebb and flow of history. Since 2001, the United States has taken center stage, looming so large in Pakistan’s collective imagination that it sometimes seems to be responsible for everything that goes wrong here… ‘When the water stops running from the tap, people blame America,’ said Shaista Sirajuddin, an English professor in Lahore… The problem is more than a peculiar domestic phenomenon for Pakistan. It has grown into a narrative of national victimhood that is a nearly impenetrable barrier to any candid discussion of the problems here. In turn, it is one of the principal obstacles for the United States in its effort to build a stronger alliance with a country to which it gives more than a billion dollars a year in aid.” But let’s not forget about neighboring (and nuclear) India.
India has accused Pakistan of funding and staffing an insurgency in its northern (and border) state of Kashmir – a hotly contest and mostly Muslim state that Pakistan believes should be annexed to it – as well as the 60 hour assault last November in India’s port city of Mumbai that left 166 people dead. And look at the stories coming out of Pakistan even now. A Pakistani Army major is now linked to the recent failed Times Square bombing attempt. Maybe this little blurb in the New York Times (May 22nd) about Pakistan’s equivalent of New York City – Karachi – adds a little richness to understanding the problem: “In this violent city of 18 million people, where the country’s wealthiest live just miles from thousands of extremist religious schools and their Taliban supporters, lies the urban front line of Pakistan’s struggle with Islamic militancy.” Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American who is accused of planting a car bomb in Times Square, lived in Karachi in the mid-1990s. Is this where he discovered his anti-American calling?
Taliban – both of the Pakistani and Afghan variety – live in this distressing and skanky slum-infested city. Thousands of religious schools – Madrasa – teaching uncompromising Muslim militancy to impressionable children – thrive here. And for bombers, gunmen and wanted terrorists, it is a city where hiding in plain sight is a clear option. Karachi may be the world’s capital of global Muslim terrorism, even more that the dreaded Tribal Districts where official Pakistani control doesn’t really exist; Karachi, you see, offers direct transit to the rest of the earth.
The path to the Times Square bombing leads here: “The Pakistani authorities have arrested two men in Karachi who they say were linked to Mr. Shahzad and are now questioning them in Islamabad, Pakistani officials say. One was close to Jamaat-e-Islami, a radical religious party that is staunchly anti-American and whose supporters have harbored operatives of Al Qaeda, a Karachi police official said… The second man was arrested at a mosque funded by Jaish-i-Muhammad, an Islamic extremist group that has been backed by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, and has recently joined forces with the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas.
“Jaish and a multitude of other hard-line Islamic groups have helped make Karachi, with its overlay of radical Islamic edicts — cinemas barely exist, alcohol is essentially banned — a welcoming rear base for the Pakistani Taliban… It is also a sanctuary for the Afghan Taliban, who the Americans are fighting in Afghanistan and who are clients of the Pakistanis. Despite the arrest of a senior commander for the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, on the outskirts of Karachi in January, some senior members still stay in the wealthy area of the Defense Housing Authority and have free passage in and out of the city, according to local politicians.” The Times. As much as we fear Iran and North Korea with their nuclear might (or near nuclear might), it is the fragile political system in Pakistan that threatens the United States like no other. It is these nukes that may one day explode in our own cities and towns.
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