Pakistan is the Most Dangerous Country in the World

Friday, June 5, 2009

By OmEr Jamil

June 05, 2009

Speaking on ABC radio PM programme, Lieutenant Colonel Kilcullen, a former theorist of asymmetrical warfare in the Australian Army and a senior advisor US General Petraeus , said that while the international focus has shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan, Pakistan is central to security concerns within in the region.

“I think it’s not an exaggeration to say that Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world today,” he said. “In certainly in terms of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency problems, it is the problem that most worries me and I think that should most worry Western policy makers. Pakistan is a very developed country, there’s a Pakistani Diaspora across most other countries in Europe and North and South America and it has more than 100 nuclear weapons,” he said. “The government is progressively losing control of its own population and territory. And you’ve got Al Qaeda sitting right in the middle of the country so it’s a very, very significant problem.”

The counter-insurgency expert says the problems in Pakistan are compounded by a lack of direct access and diverging priorities within the Pakistani security agencies.

“We don’t have a lot of ability to influence the situation in Pakistan and frankly there are elements in the Pakistani military and intelligence services who are on the other side,” he said. “I think that the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] has a history of using militant extremist organizations as an unconventional counterweight to Indian regional influence and most members of the Pakistani national security establishment tend to regard the real threat to Pakistan as India, not extremist militancy.”