The danger in Pakistan

Pakistan’s constitutional crisis is the biggest problem the world has faced since 9/11. It is not alarmist to suggest that there is a possibility that a nuclear power could either end up being run by radical Islamists or as a failed state. 

This Washington Post story shows how volatile the situation is. Xenia Dormandy, who was the Bush administration’s National Security Council director for South Asia until August 2005, tells the paper that she “would be very surprised if [Musharraf] lasts even six months.” Stephen Cohen, perhaps the pre-eminent Pakistan expert in Washington, is blunt that he doesn’t “know what’s going to happen” and warns “I don’t think any Pakistan expert knows what will happen even tomorrow.”

The Bush administration’s decision to put so much stock in Musharraf, a dictator who by his own admission only offered support for the war on terror when he realised that Pakistan could not “confront [The United States] and withstand the onslaught”, could turn out to be the biggest strategic mistake of the war on terror to date.