Pakistan in trouble
The Pakistani Army is “bleeding”, and quite profusely at that, in its ongoing bloody skirmishes with extremists in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, with a “high” casualty rate as well as “unprecedented” levels of desertions, suicides and discharge applications.This is the “assessment” of the Indian security establishment closely tracking developments in Pakistan’s federally administered tribal areas (FATA), especially the Waziristan region, as also the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan.
The embattled Pakistani Army may have managed an uneasy ceasefire with pro-Taliban extremists in Swat Valley in NWFP on Monday, after days of fierce fighting, but things would only get worse for it in the coming days, officials here said.
The loud and clear indicator for this came on Tuesday, with a suicide attack near the heavily-fortified Pakistani Army HQ in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, killing at least seven people. The secure compound, incidentally, also houses President Pervez Musharraf’s office.
I’ve been trying to get a ‘read’ on Pakistan for a while now. My best conclusion at this time is that Pakistan is losing their war against Islamic extremists. That is of course a very bad thing.
It is also somewhat unclear what the best course of action for the U.S. is. Too much aid to Pakistan might actually just make the problem worse. A renewed focus on Afghanistan might help somewhat, although even under the best case that might have mixed results as far as Pakistan is concerned.
A very large part of Pakistan’s problem has been left out of the article that you have quoted from.
The other part centres on Musharrif and the legality of his Presidency. Imagine Bush suspending the Constitution…?
Actually, it is quite interesting to puddle around here as quite some of the articles accessed from news.google come out blank - and I suspect censorship as a cause.
Of the articles I have read thus far comes this intro -