Pakistan is quite simply far more important to the region, the West and the world than is Afghanistan:
a statement which is a matter not of sentiment but of mathematics. With more than 180 million people, Pakistan has nearly six times the population of Afghanistan (or Iraq), twice the population of Iran, and almost two-thirds the population of the entire Arab world put together. Pakistan has a large diaspora in Britain (and therefore in the EU), some of whom have joined the Islamist extremists and carried out terrorist attacks against Britain. The help of the Pakistani intelligence services to
Britain has been absolutely vital to identifying the links of these potential terrorists to groups in
Pakistan, and to preventing more attacks on Britain, the USA and Europe. Pakistan therefore has been
only a partial ally in the ‘war on terror’ – but still a vital and irreplaceable one. For we need to remember that in the end it is only legitimate Muslim governments and security services that can control terrorist plots on their soil. Western pressure may be necessary to push them in the right direction, but we need to be careful that this pressure does not become so overwhelming that it undermines or even destroys those governments, by humiliating them in the eyes of their own people.
Finally, Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons and one of the most powerful armies in Asia. This means
that the option of the US attacking Pakistan with ground forces in order to force it to put pressure on
the Afghan Taleban simply does not exist – as both the Pentagon and the Pakistani military have long
understood. Deeply unsatisfying though this has been for the West, the only means of influencing
Pakistan has been through economic incentives and the threat of their withdrawal. Economic sanctions are not really a credible threat, because the economic collapse of Pakistan would play straight into the hands of the Taleban and Al Qaeda.
Book Name
Pakistan A Hard Country
Author
Anatol Lieven
Language
English
Format
PDF
Size
6 MB
Pages
1213
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