Pakistan’s descent into chaos

Few countries elicit as much bewilderment as Pakistan — unstable and unreliable, it is simultaneously a friend and foe. Indeed, over the last decade Islamabad has arguably aided the War on Terror as much as it has hindered it. The stakes could barely be higher. A nuclear power in which terrorist groups operate with near impunity, it sits in the strategic heart of South Asia bordering Iran, Afghanistan, China, and India. Its Baluchistan port, Gwadar, is just 200 miles from the Straits of Hormuz — a vital channel for seaborne oil exports threatened with blockade by the Iranians should it be attacked.

The United States may well be looking to withdraw from Afghanistan in the coming years, but it cannot not exculpate itself from the region for the foreseeable future. This is the lesson of 9/11 that counsels against turning a Nelsonian eye to failed and ungovernable spaces where the millenarian zeal of fundamentalists can grow unchecked.