On the precipice

Pakistan is still finding it difficult to accept that the forces it once created and nurtured, with a view toward influencing Afghanistan and crushing India in Kashmir, have now turned against their masters. Powerful elements within the Pakistan army still see the Taliban as an asset, which seems to account for their reluctance to move decisively in the Swat Valley or redeploy forces from the eastern border with India.

Yet in the last week alone, the Taliban has blown up a Pakistani school, kidnapped a dozen soldiers and beheaded at least two of them, and stormed and occupied government buildings, causing thousands of residents to flee. By one estimate, half a million people will be displaced over the next week.

The Pakistani president’s visit to Washington this week comes at a time when the collapse of much of his country appears almost unstoppable. In Sindh province, ethnic clashes last week claimed more than two dozen lives and brought the bustling port city of Karachi, Pakistan’s financial capital, to a halt. In Balochistan, large-scale public projects, notably the deep-sea port at Gwadar funded by China, have served to inflame rather than heal separatist sentiments. And in Swat, the Zardari government’s deal with the Taliban -- effectively capitulating to its principal nemesis in a region 60 miles from Islamabad -- has unleashed forces that look set to consume Pakistan.

If Pakistan’s problems were principally humanitarian in nature, the Obama administration could settle the matter with a generous check. But Pakistan possesses at least 55 nuclear warheads, and as the Taliban steadily progresses toward Islamabad, their safety is a matter of grave concern. Pakistan’s history of selling nuclear secrets to the highest bidders -- among them Iran and North Korea, as documented by Gordon Corera in his book, “Shopping for Bombs” -- makes it difficult to have confidence in the government’s repeated assurances that its weapons are secure.

Supporting Pakistan with long-term fiscal aid should be a top priority, but Washington also must take action to safeguard Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal.

The Bush administration sought to achieve this by offering to share with Islamabad the sophisticated PALS (“Permissive Action Links”) technology, which would have linked Pakistan’s nuclear weapons to secret codes that would control their activation. Legal restrictions on the American side prevented this from happening.

The Obama administration must find a way to revive this deal. It is the least contentious of all options and the one that Islamabad is most likely to acquiesce to.

But there will be obstacles to overcome. Washington’s parsimonious approach to aid has alienated many Pakistanis. Over the last three months, the U.S. has severely restricted its funding to Pakistan, refusing even to reimburse Islamabad for costs it has incurred in military operations against the Taliban. This has diminished President Asif Ali Zardari’s authority, weakened the army’s morale and generally made a mockery of the whole operation.

It makes little sense for the Obama administration, which has pumped billions into failed financial institutions since assuming office, to withhold aid from a country whose failure, in the words of its own secretary of State, poses a “mortal threat” to global security.

In six decades of its existence, Pakistan has failed to establish a normal pattern of governance: Every civilian government either collapsed or was ousted before its term ended. Their government has doubtless failed them, but over the last decade, as Pakistanis protested against the cartoons in Denmark, the riots in Kashmir, the raids in Gaza and even against the knighthood of Salman Rushdie, they allowed substantial portions of their nation to slip into the hands of extremists who now threaten to destroy it.

Twenty-five years into its creation, the original Pakistan, unable to contain diversity, disintegrated. Thirty-five years after that, as Pakistan once again fights for its survival, its people, particularly its educated middle-class, must ask themselves what kind of a Pakistan they want to live in. Is it going to be a Muslim Pakistan that imposes harsh religious law on its people, or is it going to be a Muslim-majority Pakistan that tolerates pluralism?

Aid and ammunition are necessary. But alone they cannot save Pakistan. Only its people can.