A Pakistani security personnel in front of the devastated Marriott Hotel in Islamabad in September 2008. The United Nations and Britain said Thursday that they will withdraw the children of international staff from Pakistan in the wake of the deadly bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. (AFP/File/Aamir Qureshi)Danger Ahead for the Most Dangerous Place in the World
-- Washington Post
-- Washington Post
Here's an alarming thought: Pakistan is in even scarier shape than most of the so-called experts are willing to admit.
This nuclear-armed state of 168 million is no stranger to political upheaval, of course. But this time, things are different. Today's ongoing crisis -- marked by a rash of suicide bombings, the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto last December, inflation as high as 25 percent and a resurgent Taliban movement -- could spell doom for the Pakistani state itself. The global financial crisis has only made matters worse: Pakistan's foreign-exchange reserves are collapsing, and credit markets are worried that it could soon default on its debt payments. The grim truth is that Pakistan is becoming something alarmingly close to a failed state. And that could have disastrous consequences for the United States, NATO and Afghanistan's struggle to hold back its own Taliban insurgency.
Read more ....
My Comment: Long time readers of this blog know that we have been pointing out the duplicitous nature of Pakistani politics. A long time culture of religious intolerance, political corruption, and a military operating under multiple agendas .... all of this has combined to make Pakistan a soon to be failed state.
This opinion piece by Sumit Ganguly in the Washington Post sums up all of my concerns and fears perfectly.