David Kilcullen, a top advisor to General Petraeus during the surge, is setting off alarms with a recent interview he did with the Washington Post.

“Pakistan is 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the U.S. Army, and al-Qaeda headquarters sitting right there in the two-thirds of the country that the government doesn’t control. The Pakistani military and police and intelligence service don’t follow the civilian government; they are essentially a rogue state within a state. We’re now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state, also because of the global financial crisis, which just exacerbates all these problems.”

If this keeps up, then it seems that Kilcullen’s fears will be actualized. President Zardari has signed a bill permitting Sharia Law in Swat Valley, essentially allowing the Taliban and their ideological allies to govern a piece of the country despite their breaking of many Pakistani laws. The Wall Street Journal reports that, predictably, thousands of militants have fled to the Swat Valley and are setting up training camps, increasing their numbers to twice the amount they had last year to 6-8,000.

We are now back at stage one. It’s as if the war in Afghanistan never even happened. And things are about to get a lot worse.

Posted by Ryan Mauro at 8:03 am
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