Roosting Vultures

Benazir Bhutto's father founded the party that his assassinated daughter's husband now leads. When Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ran for election under the banner of his Pakistan Peoples Party, he promised the poor, the vast disadvantaged of the country living under a feudal system of aristocratic entitlement and land ownership that he would create a society that was fair and just, and that their needs would be met.

Once he attained power he abandoned that promise, and instead invested the country's scarce resources in an attempt to match India's feat of attainment of nuclear power.

He saw fit - instead of feeding the poor, creating opportunities for the entire population to advance themselves in an emerging economy - to fund and encourage Abdul Qadeer Khan, a metallurgist and engineer who honed his talents in the Netherlands, learning the expertise required to produce nuclear weapons. After working for a European nuclear organization he returned to Pakistan, designs for uranium enrichment technology in hand, to elevate Pakistan into the elite cadre of nuclear-empowered countries.

Facing off against India was the point of entry, the need to advance the economy was secondary.

The world is not concerned over a nuclear arsenal in the hands of India, the second most-populous country in the world, and the world's largest democratic nation, with the third largest Muslim population. That Pakistan could be considered somewhat less than trustworthy was borne out by the fact that no constraints had been placed upon A.Q. Khan, and the critical expertise his experience represented. He was left free to barter his knowledge to the highest bidder.

North Korea bid high; another societally-backward and impoverished country that held ownership of high-grade munitions more dear than the potential to feed its large and indigent population. From North Korea to Iran, with love. And from North Korea to Syria, the potential, each in the nascent stage of empowerment. From these two, to the possibilities of 'empowering' Islamofascist terror groups.

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency might have been more than willing to see to a successful conclusion of that aim.

In the interim, the world awaits with high trepidation the outcome of the Pakistan military's assaults on the Taliban. Hard to credit in some ways, since it has long been known of the infiltration by Islamists into the military of the country, but more so throughout Pakistan's Intelligence Agency which has partnered itself with fanatical Islamists in the past, the extent of its current involvement not quite known, but from the attacks on Mumbai assumed as reality.

Pakistan is a conflicted country; on the one hand many in the population - likely a clear majority - would prefer a secularist democratic-type Muslim nation, on the other those who tend toward the political Islamification of the country. Even they, however, aren't prepared for the fanatical Taliban and their al-Qaeda confreres to take over the country as they succeeded in doing in Afghanistan until being routed by the Americans post 9-11.

When Russia, uneasy with the reality of an Islamist theocracy in Afghanistan that they thought would pose a threat to their own stability in the spread of militant Islamism decided to invade Afghanistan to oppose Islamist rule and replace it with an administration of their choosing, they found themselves in a quagmire of mujadaheen resistance, drawing out the years of conflict and causing over a million Afghan deaths, five million refugees, and impoverishing the land completely.

The process of civil disintegration led to the Taliban administration.

The United States colluded with, encouraged, funded and trained Islamist 'freedom fighters'. Pakistan, with its eye on enlarging its territory into Afghanistan did its part to encourage the mujahadeen. Russia suffered so many casualties and paid so heavily in the loss of materiel, it pulled out of the country after leaving it strewn with deadly mines, the counter-insurgency having compellingly demonstrated its determination.

Now Benazir Bhutto's husband, President Asif Ali Zardari speaks of the pathology that the Taliban represents: "a kind of a cancer, created by both of us, Pakistan and America". "We need to find a strategy where the world gets together against this threat because it's not Pakistan-specific. It's not Afghanistan-specific", claims President Zardari. He, of course, was responsible for signing a 'peace agreement' with the Taliban in Swat, allowing them to impose Shariah law in return for promising to end their attacks on his troops.

They took that as their opportunity to expand their position, and enter other villages to bring them under their wing, in the process reaching toward an hour's drive of Islamabad, and a much shorter distance to the country's munitions depots and nuclear installations. People in the Swat and neighbouring districts began leaving their homes in droves, driven out by the fear of Taliban rule, one that had already destroyed hundreds of schools, engaged in brutal executions, and imposed strict rules against music, beardless males and the education of girls.

Now that the Pakistan military is assaulting the Taliban strongholds, attempting to win back the country's sovereignty in a no-holds-barred battle for the government's hold on power, and the very existence of Pakistan as a secular Muslim state, hundreds of thousands of fearful internally displaced have desperately thronged out of Swat, Buner and Lower Dir regions, to live in squalid refugee camps.

This entire scenario owes its present desperate state to the government of Saudi Arabia, eager to reach into other Muslim countries to export its fundamentalist brand of Islam as far as conceivably it could. Toward that end, it expended oil dollars around the world to build madrassas whose sole purpose was to teach impressionable young Muslims Wahhabist Islam, centred on jihad.

The world is now living with the fall-out of that pious decision. And Saudi Arabia is now discreetly closing down many of its infamous madrassas. A classic example of shutting the barn door after the creatures therein have made good their escape.