Importance of Pakistan

I don't know if you've been paying attention to the recent upheavals in Pakistan, but if you haven't, take a moment to check out your favorite news sites for stories about this important country.
Why is Pakistan so important? It is a Muslim country, with something like 99.5% of the population being of the Muslim faith. Now, you might say, "So? Lots of countries have populations that are 99.5% Muslim." Pakistan is different from those other Muslim countries because it has nuclear weapons. That is a difference some Muslims would like to eliminate, especially those adhering to the likes of Bin Laden. There have already been numerous stories about Pakistani military personnel or Pakistani nuclear scientists having had contact with the militant Islamists.

Until after World War II, Pakistan was a part of India. While a British colony, the population of all India were united against a common opponent...Britain. The people wanted the British to leave and grant them freedom. Once it became clear that the British would indeed be leaving, the religious split, particularly between Muslims and Hindus came to the fore. It was incredibly violent and brutal, with many thousands killed on both sides. From this developed a terrible hatred between the two religious segments of the population and the eventual partition of India into a Hindu dominated India and a Muslim dominated Pakistan. There was a great movement of people, as the small Hindu segment living in the Pakistani areas moved into India, and many Muslims in India moved into Pakistan. Pakistan was literally divided into two parts, the one which is still Pakistan today, and the other part like about a thousand miles east/southeast, which in the early 1970s became the independent country of Bangladesh. The hatred between India and Pakistan grew even more intense over the area known as Kashmir. Most of the area is under Indian rule, but it contains a large Muslim population. The dispute over this area has festered for decades, and I'm sure, if you've paid much attention to news stories over the years, you've heard about bombings and killings in Kashmir. (I should note, that while Pakistan is essentially an all Muslim country, India has a substantial Muslim minority.)

During their colonial rule of "India," even the British had problems in many of the areas which later became Pakistan. When we hear today about Bin Laden possibly hiding in border areas in Pakistan, it is these almost "lawless" regions where he is thought to be.

The government of Pakistan is a military dominated dictatorship, which pays a certain homage to Islam, but is not in the radical Islamist camp. While Americans love to talk about freedom for others, if anything happens to the Pakistani government, and a militant Islamist group takes control, LOOK OUT!!! India would almost certainly be their first target (India also has nulcear weapons), but what other Muslim fanatics would have access to "the bomb" is another scary notion . Fanatics have tried to kill the head of the current Pakistani government, Musharraf, on several occasions. I'm not one to uphold dictators, but sometimes self interest has to get the nod. Iraq has shown us that toppling a dictator can be easy; after all, that part of the war in Iraq was not terribly difficult. It is the AFTERMATH than can be hell, especially in countries where we really don't understand the political and religious divides. Pakistan is a similar country. It has faced West in many ways (at least the government and many elements of the population), but it also has a fanatical Islamist element, and tribal chieftains who control their own areas, and where the "national" government is not welcome.

So, hopefully things will settle down in Pakistan and that will also help to keep us safer too.