It has a weak and feckless government, is beset by poverty and corruption, and militants sympathetic to Al-Qaeda control large swathes of its territory.
And yet despite the prophets of doom, Pakistan is not about to implode. In fact, analysts say, most risks are on the upside.
Nervously watching the Taleban expand ever closer to Islamabad, senior US officials have warned of looming disaster. Pakistan “poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world”, said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The worst-case scenario goes like this: Taleban militants extend their grip across Pakistan, undermining the government of President Asif Ali Zardari with a succession of bomb attacks in key cities. In the ensuing chaos, the world is faced with the specter of a failed state run by nuclear-armed militants. Frightening, but the chances of it happening are negligible.
“The Taleban are not going to take over the Pakistani government,” said University of Michigan professor Juan Cole. “A few thousand tribesmen can’t take over a country of 165 million with a large urban middle class that has a highly organized and professional army.” Nobody expects much good news out of Pakistan anytime soon. But that does not mean the situation is going to get significantly worse and seriously spook global markets.
“Pakistan is bad, let’s be in no doubt about that,” said Alistair Newton, senior political analyst at Nomura. “But at the moment, and except in very low probability scenarios, I would say the risks are largely internalized, with the exception of the possibility — which I would put higher — of further terrorist attacks in India with Pakistani fingerprints on them.”
Despite the alarm last month when the Taleban took control of areas just 100 km (60 miles) from Islamabad, geographical proximity does not translate into being anywhere near seizing overall power in Pakistan. That would require winning control of Punjab and Sindh, and analysts see little chance of that. “They don’t have the capability at the moment to take over Punjab and Sindh,” said Maria Kuusisto, Pakistan analyst at Eurasia Group in London. “We’re talking about 6-7,000 fighters and the Pakistani Army has more than 500,000 men.” The army has already launched a major assault on the Taleban in Swat, and any attempt by militants to threaten the capital would inevitably elicit a swift military response. “The Taleban are hardly going to muster the will or the force to launch what would have to be a conventional attack against Islamabad,” Newton said. “That would be a sure-fire recipe for them getting carved apart by the Pakistani Army.”
To make inroads into Punjab or Sindh the Taleban would need some degree of popular support there. Whatever the outcome of the offensive in Swat, analysts say, the Taleban will remain a destabilizing force. “They have the ability to carry out coordinated and very sophisticated terrorist attacks,” Kuusisto said. “That in itself is a big worry for the country in the short- and medium-term.”
So if Pakistan is not doomed, why the US rhetoric? Analysts said the warnings of disaster served two main purposes — to push the US Congress and allied governments into quickly authorizing substantial aid for Islamabad, and to try to spur Pakistan’s reluctant government to take on the Taleban rather than seek to reach an uneasy accommodation.
“The Taleban takeover scenario was totally hyped,” Kuusisto said. “It was politically motivated, totally intentional hype.”
