The Pakistani Mecca of Terror

[Valin]

Real Clear Defense:

Brahma Chellaney

October 18, 2016

 

Almost seven decades after it was created as the first Islamic republic of the postcolonial era, Pakistan is teetering on the edge of an abyss. The economy is stagnant, unemployment is high, and resources are scarce. The government is unstable, ineffective, and plagued by debt. The military—along with its rogue Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, comprising the country’s spies and secret policemen—is exempt from civilian oversight, enabling it to maintain and deepen its terrorist ties.

 

Nuclear-armed Pakistan is now at risk of becoming a failed state. But even if it doesn’t fail, the nexus between terrorist groups and Pakistan’s powerful military raises the spectre of nuclear terrorism—a menace so large that the United States has prepared a contingency plan to take out the country’s fast-growing nuclear arsenal should the need arise.

 

Make no mistake: Pakistan is ‘ground zero’ for the terrorist threat the world faces. The footprints of many terrorist attacks in the West have been traced to Pakistan, including the 2005 London bombings and the 2015 San Bernardino killings. Two key actors behind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States—Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheik Mohammed—were found ensconced in Pakistan. In the recent Manhattan and New Jersey bombings, the arrested suspect, Ahmad Khan Rahami, was radicalised in a Pakistani seminary located near the Pakistani military’s hideout for the Afghan Taliban leadership.

 

(Snip)