Pakistan on the brink

Pakistan is close to the brink, perhaps not to a meltdown of the government, but to a permanent state of anarchy. Even as most Pakistanis have concluded that the Taliban now pose the greatest threat to the Pakistani state since its creation, the president, the prime minister, and the army chief have, until recently, been in a state of denial of reality. One can therefore expect a slow, insidious, long-burning fuse of fear, terror, and paralysis that the Taliban have lit and that the state is unable, and partly unwilling, to douse.

The Taliban have taken advantage of the vacuum of governance by carrying out spectacular suicide bombings in major cities across the country. Having won Swat, the Taliban have made clear their intentions to overthrow the national government. Although the group has no single acknowledged leader, it has formed alliances with around forty different extremist groups, some of them with no previous direct connection to the Taliban. Moreover, the Afghan Taliban have become a model for the entire region. The Afghan Taliban of the 1990s have morphed into the Pakistani Taliban and the Central Asian Taliban and it may be only a question of time before we see the Indian Taliban.

Ahmed Rashid in his latest article paints a grim picture of the impending failure of Pakistan and its likely repercussions.