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US experts see Pakistan disintegrating

* Claim Pakistan’s fragmentation will threaten nuclear arsenal, Afghanistan, India, Persian Gulf, Central Asia and US
* Say views are realistic expectation based on militants’ gains

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: A growing number of US officials and experts now believe that it may be impossible to prevent Pakistan from disintegrating.

The Americans fear that warlords and terrorists will eventually control a large part of the territory, posing a greater threat to the US than Afghanistan did before 9/11, a report in the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer claimed. “It’s a disaster in the making on the scale of the Iranian revolution,” said an intelligence official on condition of anonymity.

Major threat: Pakistan’s fragmentation would threaten the security of its nuclear arsenal, Afghanistan, India, the oil-rich Persian Gulf, Central Asia, the US and its allies. “Pakistan has 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of Al Qaeda sitting in ... [the area] the government does not control,” said David Kilcullen, 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 US 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.”

Realistic expectation: The experts said these views are not a worst-case scenario but a realistic expectation based on the militants’ gains and the Pakistani leadership’s response to it. “The place is beyond redemption,” said a Pentagon adviser. “If you look out 10 years, I think the government will be overrun by Islamic militants.” That pessimistic view of Pakistan’s future has been bolstered by the Malakand deal with the Taliban and a growing militant infiltration of Karachi — in part to evade US drone strikes in the Tribal Areas..

The Taliban “have now become a self-sustaining force”, Ahmed Rashid told a conference in Washington on Wednesday. “They have an agenda for Pakistan, and that agenda is no less than to topple the government of Pakistan and ‘Talibanising’ the entire country,” he added.

“The Punjabi elite has already lost control of Pakistan, but neither they nor the Obama administration realise that,” a US intelligence official said. Several US officials say that the Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy of President Barack Obama is being overtaken by the expanding insurgency in Pakistan. The plan hinges on the Pakistan Army’s willingness to put aside its obsession with India and focus on fighting the insurgency.

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