As we watch the news, Israeli troops flooding into Gaza with casualties mounting rapidly, it is tempting to believe that this powder keg sits at the very top of the “most dangerous” list. Clearly, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is way up there, but there may be an even scarier threat, at least for now.
Imagine a country – a nuclear power with an estimated 60-70 operable nuclear weapons with the missiles to deliver them – that does not have functional military control over a quarter of its lands, is plagued with political instability, decades of failed economic policies, knowingly spread detailed plans as to how to build and process nuclear fuel to nations like Iran (which strongly supports the Hamas attacks on Israel) and North Korea and has an intelligence service that, despite orders to stand down from such activities, has fomented, supported and even trained terrorist fundamentalist groups to carry out attacks that have killed thousands over the years. Picture Pakistan… our purported ally in the “war on terrorism.”
Many believe that Osama bin Ladin and his cronies can move in relative safety in Pakistan’s Western Tribal District (which borders Afghanistan), a region that has very limited control from the central government. The recent attacks in Mumbai (India), which killed 171 people (including 40 Muslims), were seemingly perpetrated by a terrorist group in India’s Kashmir (a northern state, heavily populated with Muslims, with a strong separatist movement) that has long been supported by Pakistan’s intelligence services (ISI).
Since partition largely along religious lines in 1947, India (85% Hindu) and Pakistan (almost all Muslim) have fought three wars. Tensions between these rivals have always been high, but in the last few years the parties seem to have worked their way to détente, even allowing their citizens to travel back and forth across the border. Despite the assassination of Benazir Bhutto as she ran for office in Pakistan, the central governments continued to pursue a policy of disengagement and compromise.
The attacks on Mumbai were the destructive straw that broke the camel’s back, clearly an intention of the militants, and once again placed Pakistan and India squarely on opposite sides of a very hostile border. Pakistan arrested several Indian citizens in response to a bombing in their city of Lahore. Travel warnings have been issued by both nations.
But the redeployment of troops is the harshest warning that this tense region could easily become the nuclear spark that could envelop the earth in nuclear fallout. According to the December 26 New York Times: “Pakistan is moving some troops away from its western border with Afghanistan, where the United States has pressed it to combat Taliban militants, and stopping many soldiers from going on leave amid rising tensions with India, senior Pakistani officials said [December 26]… A senior military official said in an interview that the decision to sharply restrict leave for soldiers was taken ‘in view of the prevailing environment,’ namely the deteriorating relations with India since the Mumbai terrorist attacks last month. He added that the Pakistani air force was ‘vigilant’ and ‘alert’ for the same reason… A second Pakistani security official would not say where the forces were being sent, but confirmed the troop movements and the restrictions on leave, saying ‘there’s an obvious reason for that.’”
With the financial meltdown dominating global politics, it is little wonder than the Secretary of State-Designate, Hillary Clinton, would like to expand her mandate to encompass a vast broader array of economic issues, and undoubtedly at some level political and economic issues cannot indeed be easily separated. But are we best served, in a world of hair-trigger conflicts that could embroil the earth, with a Secretary of State seeking to spread herself thin, or one focused on issues like the above tension in South Asia, the clear battles in the Middle East which impact on the survival of our ally Israel and the flow of oil, the rise of populist authoritarianism in Latin America, or a new emboldened Russia seeking control of Arctic riches, expanding influence in the Western Hemisphere and seeming to reopen the Cold War realities we once thought were behind us? I vote for focus.
I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.
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