We Few, Against The World

The Strategy Page ^ | 12/30/2009 | The Strategy Page

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

In Pakistan, police have engaged the population to identify Islamic terrorist cells and prevent more bombing attacks (which are killing mostly civilians). As a result, police have recently seized 2.5 tons of explosives and interrupted at least six terrorist bombings. In the tribal territories, 700 retired members of the Frontier Corps (the border police) were called up to help deal with the terrorist threat. For over a decade, the Pakistani government has been split over how to deal with Islamic radical groups. Until the last few years, those officials and institutions who sought to protect Islamic radical groups, were able to do so. But no more. Gradually, the more radical members of the terrorist groups pushed for war against the government, so that an Islamic dictatorship could be established. This was not acceptable to the few thousand elite families that basically run the country. While many Pakistanis are Islamic conservatives, most do not support a religious dictatorship either (having seen how that has not worked in neighboring Iran, and noticing how corrupt many Pakistani clerics are.) So now, the Islamic terrorists find themselves at war with the entire country. The Islamic radicals have the support of only a few percent of the population, but that's a recruiting pool of several million, mostly male, mostly uneducated and mostly homicidal people. That results in less than 100,000 active terrorists, and many of these are very borderline in terms of effectiveness.

[dixjea]

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