It has been a while since we last heard doom scenarios about Pakistan, so it seems to me all of you will appreciate me linking to this piece at the Sydney Morning Herald.

PAKISTAN could collapse within months, one of the more influential counter-insurgency voices in Washington says.

The warning comes as the US scrambles to redeploy its military forces and diplomats in an attempt to stem rising violence and anarchy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“We have to face the fact that if Pakistan collapses it will dwarf anything we have seen so far in whatever we’re calling the war on terror now,” said David Kilcullen, a former Australian Army officer who was a specialist adviser for the Bush administration and is now a consultant to the Obama White House.

“You just can’t say that you’re not going to worry about al-Qaeda taking control of Pakistan and its nukes,” he said…

“Pakistan has 173 million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of al-Qaeda sitting in two-thirds of the country which the Government does not control.”

That’s always great to hear, isn’t it?

All snarks aside, Pakistan truly is one of the most troubled countries in the world. It is not merely in danger of collapsing – and it has been like this for years – but it could very well destabilize the entire region. The Taliban and Al Qaeda both found refuge in the country’s tribal region. If the central government can no longer hold the country together, you can only imagine what these terrorist and extremist groups will do.

They will spread their zone of influence – if you think they are important in the region now, wait until a power vacuum exists in Pakistan itself. This is truly a nightmare: Pakistan is not merely powerful and big, it also has nuclear weapons.

You have to wonder, however, whether there truly is any danger of Al Qaeda and / or the Taliban getting their hands on the country’s weapons of mass destruction. As Newshoggers‘ Steve Hynd told me in an e-mail (also be sure to read his own post on this matter), ‘It reads to me like Kilcullen is hyperventilating somewhat when he says that “You can’t have al-Qaeda in control of Pakistan’s missiles”, but [it is] a very interesting interview nonetheless.’ He continued: ‘You have to wonder about the logic of being scared that any country run by an army even bigger than America’s is in danger of being defeated or even de-nuked by a rag-tag mob of militants…and if so, how exactly is US military might *next door* going to be able to do anything about it? The truth is, the Taliban et al have exactly the control of territory the Pakistani military allows them…all the bits that historically they’ve not seen as worth controlling themselves.’

Still, Pakistan is in trouble, Steve agreed, also because the country’s military refuses to take orders from the civilian leadership in Islamabad.

Another interesting point Kilcullen makes in the interview, is that he is less worried about Afghanistan than about Pakistan. Afghanistan is small potatoes compared to its big brother. In the former the allied forces “understand” what is going on, they only have trouble doing something about it. In the latter, however, it is incredibly difficult to understand the situation, let alone come up with workable solutions to its problems.