While much of media in Europe and USA are focused on war on Ukraine and tens of billions worth of weapons is sent there, there is much more dangerous crisis developing in Pakistan. This country has around 165 nuclear warheads.
Pakistan is currently moving towards acute financial crisis – according to WION news from nearly month ago Pakistan can run out of cash in less than 2 months. Recently bailout talks between Pakistan and IMF failed and this country is on the brink of bankruptcy. Pakistan has no possibility of issuing bonds, and countries to which it’s government asked for help, China, Saudi Arabia and UAE, refused to do anything before IMF bailout. Overall $36 billion is needed to bailout Pakistan, and their roughly $10 billion reserves will run out in about 2 months, and already pending $3.2 billion debt payments.
It would be 23rd bailout of this country by IMF, more than any other country has been bail-outed, however there are some factors which make this region particularly difficult:
- long term threat from terrorists from neighboring Afghanistan, which become recently much worse due to collapse of Kabul after US forces withdrawal
- climate in over half of the country is dry, mostly desert, with high risk of floods due to monsoons, and regular tropical storms, dust storms and heat waves, and roughly half of the rest is above 2km altitude as can be seen on this topography map for Afghanistan
- Pakistan faces water shortages and power cuts, also in may of this year, hottest city on Earth was Jacobadad, where temperatures reach 51 degrees C in summer
- Pakistan is 8th most vulnerable country to effects of climate change
With such harsh conditions, country cannot rely on its own to keep economy running.
More than just civil war
Situation is destabilized to such point that home of minister of transport of one province, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, was attacked with rockets last Saturday. The chief minister of this province says that he will deploy police forces against federal government’s forces, to help march organized by opposition leader Imran Khan, which recently claimed that his campaign is jihad, not political.
There was by general no real risk of takeover of nuclear warfare by terrorists, due to these systems having multiple safety precautions, however in current situation, if Pakistan will face economic collapse without sufficient foreign help, over time there will arise new risk of infiltration of weakened Pakistan army by TTP (Pakistani Taliban, however Taliban in Afghanistan seems to have no real control over TTP). Into consideration should be taken also that Pakistan is home to at least 12 major terrorist groups.
Further destabilization and anarchy is opportunity for TTP to gain power over powerful weapons, in turn it can be more than just a civil war in one country. And it is not strictly hypothetical scenario – The Intercept’s article mentions that already many officers in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence were Islamists who were sympathetic to the Pashtuns and the Taliban.
Also, people facing economical hardship more often become susceptible to influence by extremists.
Nuclear weapons in hands of terrorists would be disastrous. Main difference between current Pakistan’s army and extremist groups is that current army is not willing to ever launch nukes in real nuclear war, they focus on deterring effects of nuclear weapons, while extremists most likely will give no blink of an eye before launching all of the nukes without external provocation. There is simulation of effects of nuclear war between India and Pakistan published by American Association for the Advancements of Science, in which they predict 15% to 30% drop in precipitations worldwide, which would cause global starvation. It (mass starvation) might go hand in hand with attitude and goals of extremist groups, which often declare their will to destroy liberal civilization.
It would of course also increase already tense relations between Russia and US, increasing risk of triggering atomic war between these two countries – and effects on humanity of dropping several thousands of atomic bombs doesn’t need any elaboration. With global problems caused by COVID still present, and severe economic losses caused by events related to war on Ukraine, these global powers will be unlikely to be capable of containing chaos caused in case of nuclear attack performed by terrorists, and it also make better opportunity for terrorists to gain power over these larger atomic stocks, so in such case we can be nearly sure that global atomic war would happen.
American politics has failed
While focusing on what is going on Pakistan, there is problem of American side impact via Afghanistan:
- Donald Trump signed risky agreement with Taliban
- after that, just during few months, Taliban wildly broken lot of this agreement requirements
- however, Joe Biden didn’t take advantage of this newly developed situation, when US could easily issue statement that this agreement with Taliban is no longer binding to the US by any means due to Taliban breaking of requirements specified in this agreement
- such a move would change a lot regarding current Pakistan’s engagement in negotiations with Taliban, since it would cause Taliban losing all of it’s international diplomatic potential gained by this particular agreement – in the light of such move, Pakistan’s government nor army would be no longer prone to pressure to negotiate with extremist organizations, according to The Wire India “the de facto relations notwithstanding, Pakistan still does not officially recognize the Afghan Taliban regime in Kabul that hosted the talks”
- such diplomatic move can be done at any time, even today, fact that US agreement with Taliban wasn’t canceled for so long time (even after election of Joe Biden) doesn’t mean that it should be kept in power.
Overall, lot of current crisis in Pakistan is due to Washington’s incompetence, though still much is repairable.
What can be done to avoid disaster
Apart from diplomatic change mentioned above, which would shift a lot of political power away from extremists, even if American politics will fail once again, EU still has potential to handle economical and partly political load to stop situation in Pakistan from rolling quickly out of control, (instead of pushing billions worth warfare into nonsensical war on Ukraine, which is mostly game of deception where future of this country doesn’t counts anyway), even though lots of economic resources are already locked due to sanctions on Russia and attention is also mostly locked by ongoing war on Ukraine. EU could do this with cooperation with India, since UN is currently unreliable with North Korea as head of a top nuclear disarmament forum, for example in form of short term loan and humanitarian aid which is also needed due to Pakistan’s government inability to reliably secure it’s citizens basic needs both due to corruption and instability of government and also government losing power over regions to Taliban. Possibly also in form of stabilizational armed forces – which could be needed anyway in case if humanitarian aid to be distributed.