Taliban to rule Pakistan?

Pakistan’s internal problems are increasingly evident. The Taliban has grabbed control of towns within sixty-five miles of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. (Zahid Hussain, “Pakistan Taleban take over towns as they move closer to Islamabad,” Times Online, April 23, 2009)

This development underscores the failure of current policies and the desperate straight in which the Pakistani government finds itself. That government’s ceding of authority to the Taliban is eerily reminiscent of European nation’s attempting to pacify Hitler by conceding first and then another piece of territory to the Nazis. Each concession strengthened the Nazis and further emboldened them.

However, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarking that deterioration of Pakistan’s internal security poses a moral threat to the United States and to the world constitutes an unhelpful hyperbole. Pakistan lacks missiles with which to launch a nuclear attack against the United States. The more immediate threat would be to U.S. forces in the Middle East, Israel, and India.

One of the first lessons a good counselor learns is that the counselor cannot solve the client’s problems; the client must also decide which problems he or she owns. Pakistan owns the problem of the Taliban operating in that country. Decades ago Pakistan formed an “unholy” alliance with the Taliban, seeing the alliance as doubly beneficial, first against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan and second against Hindu India. The alliance has produced more problems than benefits. At times, the U.S. was complicit in aiding Pakistani support of the Taliban, e.g., in providing funding for the guerilla war against Soviets in Afghanistan.

The Taliban operating in Pakistan are not a problem the United States owns. Aiding the Pakistani government provides propaganda capital for the Taliban worth far more than any assistance the U.S. can provide to Pakistan. This is a problem that Pakistan must solve.

The U.S. should prepare contingency plans for removing or otherwise safeguard Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in case the Taliban actually take over the country. But that should represent the limit of U.S. involvement. Backing corrupt governments has repeatedly produced foreign policy fiascos, and Pakistan appears headed to be the next nation added to that list. The United States needs the humility to recognize that it cannot solve every problem in the world, and certainly not solve problems that it does not own.