Unstable Ally

In the US's campaign in Afghanistan, much is dependent on our ally to the South East, Pakistan. Since most of the fighting between US and allied forces is taking place along the mountainous and desolate border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other insurgents have enjoyed unfettered movement across the border and made outlying villages in the Pashtun province their main recruiting grounds. In fact, you may remember the foreign policy fiasco during the 2008 Presidential elections when Sarah Palin was "ambushed" in a restaurant by a voter who asked her if she would pursue terrorists across the border into Pakistan with air support to which she replied that she would. US excursions across the border into Pakistan was and is still a major problem between the two countries.

During the Bush administration, the campaign in Afghanistan, arguably much more important than Iraq, suffered a great deal of backsliding. But, Pakistan, then under Musharraf, was more subordinate to the US in terms of military action. However, towards the end of the Bush administration, air strikes and other excursions across the border became a major rallying cry of extremist Islamic groups that slowly pushed Musharraf to the breaking point. Following his manipulations of the government (such as illegally declaring state of emergency powers, attempting to dismiss the Chief Justice, and stacking the high court in his favor) and other political functions (such as postponing the elections planned for November 2008), Musharraf was forced out of office by both Islamic extremist groups and legitimate political parties who would no longer stand on the sidelines and suffer military dictatorship.

However, as soon as Musharraf's government became unstable, Islamic extremist groups seized on the opportunity to increase their size and influence, most notably the Taliban and Al Qaeda. But, Afghanistan and the US aren't the only targets of Pakistani terrorist groups. The terrorist attack in Mumbai, India last year that halted the peace process between the two countries was perpetrated by an Islamic militant group based out of Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba. Pakistan seems to be slowly losing control over its own security when it can't even bring charges against the alleged leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hafiz Saeed.

The gut check here is much scarier than the growing numbers of terrorist groups like the Taliban and Al Qaeda. In the past two years, Pakistani nuclear weapons facilities have been attacked by terrorist three times. Given that the relationship between India and Pakistan has proven to be one of the world's three most likely scenarios for regional or global nuclear war when it was just the governments of the two countries going at it, the idea of a terrorist group obtaining even one nuclear weapon from Pakistan is downright terrifying. Never mind just buying one from a rogue state like Iran or North Korea, terrorists have a better chance of straight up overwhelming an already unstable security mechanism to the point that Pakistan loses control of their nuclear facilities. We shouldn't be afraid of a state like Iran that doesn't have nukes yet. We should be afraid of a state that loses complete control over the nukes they already have.