In the midst of Iraqi war speculation and so much concentration on the Middle East, it’s been easy to forget that nuclear-armed South Asia still exists in what Ehsan Ahrari calls a “balance of terror.” Despite a modest military stand-down, Indian and Pakistani armies face each other not only in Kashmir but across hundreds and hundreds of miles of heavily armed and mined borderlands. In the Asia Times below, Ahrari makes some sense of the Pakistani-North Korea nuclear connection and of Pakistan’s fear that the balance of terror may, over time, become an imbalance of terror.
In one of her infrequent columns in the Guardian, Isabel Hinton describes the Talibanized results of the last Pakistani election and why Pakistani leader Musharraf may benefit from fundamentalist governments in the Pakistani-Afghan border regions. The estimable journalist Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban, made a similar case for the meaning of the Pakistani elections a few weeks back, which you can read in the Far Eastern Economic Review. “To read Rashid click here (registration required) Note as well Hinton’s indication in the last lines of the piece that the FBI, not the CIA, seems to be responding to the new situation by creating its own “Pakistani” mercenary force. Talk about lines blurring, what would J. Edgar have made of this? Tom
Pakistan-North Korea: A rational connection
By Ehsan Ahrari
Asia Times
December 12, 2002The news that Pakistan has supplied North Korea its highly coveted nuclear know-how created new doubts in Washington about its assessment of Pakistan as a responsible nuclear power. The modalities of the United States response will not be known in the immediate future, but one wonders about the rationality of such a move on the part of a country whose safety of nuclear weapons has remained a source of major concern in the international arena.
Who has made the decision in Pakistan to cooperate with North Korea? What is the significance of this cooperation in the context of the current “balance of terror” (a phrase that denotes a delicate and arguable balance of power based on the terror associated with the awesome consequences related to the potential use of nuclear weapons) in South Asia?
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.
To read more Ahrari click here
The news that Pakistan has supplied North Korea its highly coveted nuclear know-how created new doubts in Washington about its assessment of Pakistan as a responsible nuclear power. The modalities of the United States response will not be known in the immediate future, but one wonders about the rationality of such a move on the part of a country whose safety of nuclear weapons has remained a source of major concern in the international arena.
Who has made the decision in Pakistan to cooperate with North Korea? What is the significance of this cooperation in the context of the current “balance of terror” (a phrase that denotes a delicate and arguable balance of power based on the terror associated with the awesome consequences related to the potential use of nuclear weapons) in South Asia?
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.
To read more Ahrari click here
Pakistan is being slowly Talibanised
Musharraf has handed over the border regions to al-Qaida allies
By Isabel Hilton
December 11, 2002
The GuardianAkram Khan Durrani is not a politician likely to loom large on the world stage. But in his own pond, Mr Durrani is a very large fish. And his pond – Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province – has, since September 11, become a place of strategic interest. It is of more than passing concern, then, that when Mr Durrani was sworn in as the new chief minister of NWFP, he banned the sale of alcohol, put an end to all gambling and outlawed music in all public vehicles.
No doubt Mr Durrani had sound reasons for these measures. Alcohol, after all, is banned in Pakistan, though it is a prohibition widely ignored. And if the ban on music carries echoes of the Taliban regime, Mr Durrani can argue that it was a safety measure. Music, he said, tends to cause accidents.