Flying High With Al Qaeda
25th June 2009
One of the problems with Pakistan is that radical Islamic ideology is fully intertwined with the government and the armed forces at all levels. When Western governments attempt to pick winners and losers among the factions vying for power in Pakistan, there is no real way to avoid the extremists and terrorists. Whether it is made up of elected civilians or military officers, most governments in Pakistan seem to be riddled with terrorist connections. A government that is relatively free of such connections — such as the current one under President Asif Al Zardari — will tend to be ineffective, due to a lack of accord with public opinion, much of which has sympathies with fundamentalist Islam.