Methinks We Protest Too Late

Morris Segall      Afghanistan, hezbollah, India, Iraq, obama, protest, syria

Western nations are protesting the so called peace deal reached over last weekend between the Pakistani government and the Taliban and Al Queda forces occupying the Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan. Under the agreement, the anti-democratic forces will be allowed to govern their territory using Islamic law. This agreement essentially cedes this territory to extremist elements within the country. We called attention to this very unfavorable development in our website article, “Setback in War on Terror“, May 28, 2008 and warned this would undermine the democratic central government in Pakistan and our war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. This additional capitulation to Islamic extremists by the Pakistani government will only hasten its downfall. The West as usual has reacted with too little too late. This additional secession of territory from central government control is adding to the power base of Islamic extremists within Pakistan that will foster additional anti-democratic activity against the central government and bolster the Taliban resistance against NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Since November, 2007 we have written a number of articles warning of the increasing threat of anti-democratic actions against the government of Pakistan that would undermine it and left unchecked could topple it. The events of last weekend are further evidence of the weakness of the Pakistani government. The logical course of events from here is a period of cessation of violence while the anti-democratic forces within Pakistan consolidate their gains and prepare for further action against a visibly weak government. As the strength of the extremists grow it will influence and coerce the population AND the military to cooperate with them against the government. The West is not prepared to subdue these extremist elements with force and increasingly neither is the Pakistani military. So what is to stop these elements from continuing to expand their influence and territorial control within Pakistan? Not much. There does not appear to be grass roots sentiment among the Pakistani public to repulse the anti-democratic elements so there is no pressure from within Pakistan for the government to take a harsher stance towards the Islamic militants. Unless pro democracy elements within the Pakistani military assert themselves and dictate a change in military policy and actions against what must be called rebel elements against the elected central government in Pakistan, the country may be doomed to an Islamic fundamentalist takeover. This nightmare scenario is only now awakening a public response from democratic governments outside Pakistan.

It will be interesting to see how the new Obama administration deals with this threat. The fall of Pakistan would represent a greater geo-political disaster than the loss of Iraq and Afghanistan combined. It would place nuclear weapons in the hands of Islamic extremists. It would spell defeat in Afghanistan. It would threaten India which has already been attacked by Islamic extremists from Pakistan (See our blog article, “And Now It’s India“, January 21, 2009) and create an Islamic extremist power bloc from Syria to the Indian subcontinent. Bolstered by such a power bloc, Lebanon would also fall to Hezbollah and Israel would find itself arrayed against insurmountable forces. The threat of nuclear war in the region would be heightened. This will provide the real foreign policy strategic test of the Obama administration and we should not underestimate its seriousness.

Morris R. Segall