Thursday, April 23, 2009

The battlefront has moved... closer

Efforts by the Government of Pakistan to reach a kind of "live and let live" accommodation with the various faces of the Pakistani Taliban have led to: failure throughout the FATA (Tribal Territories; the central borderland with Afghanistan); a concession on the part of the nation in Swat, and now...

A Taliban walk-over in Buner, the next territory closer to the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

The always excellent Bill Roggio over at Long War Journal has a superb analysis, with multiple Pakistan sources cited and a very clear map showing just how bad things really are.

It is so bad that even U.S. Secretary of State H. Clinton seemed to notice,
calling the (situation in the) nuclear state a "mortal threat" to the security of the world.
Well, yes. The unasked question at the Congressional Hearing she was speaking at was "Has your Department come to believe that just recently?"

2 comments:

Kulamata said...

...The unasked question at the Congressional Hearing she was speaking at was "Has your Department come to believe that just recently?"

Just the last hundred days or so.

L.Douglas Garrett said...

@Kulamata

Heh, trenchant as always.

Seriously, do you think it is fair to say that DeptState just got with the program since the change of administration, while DoD and DoE have been treating the possiblity of a "failed-state Pakistan" as real for some time?

^some time, in the case of sections in DoE, predates the Chagai-I tests.

It would be pretty damning if there were not *any* voices of warning speaking at DeptState for the last... 7... 8... more than that... years.