Pakistan death spiral dwarfs ISIL threat: Column

There is a larger threat to the security of the United States and much of the western world than the Islamic State —and that is the as yet largely unheralded downward spiral of Pakistan into an Islamic-controlled, violent theocracy. Tuesday's bloody invasion of a school in Peshawar is only the latest evidence of such.

Back in June, Taliban fighters attacked the nation's largest airport in Karachi, massacring nearly more than two dozen, carrying their battle for control of Pakistan far beyond their native villages in the remote northwest frontier. More than a year ago, the United States assassinatedTaliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud in a drone strike that Pakistani officials were quick to condemn. It took the Taliban barely five days to react, gunning down seven Shias, including two doctors, on the streets of Karachi. And six year ago, the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, a few hundred yards from the prime minister's house, was hit by a massive truck bomb — another sign of the terrorists' reach. The barely concealed message — we can do what we want with this nation, which we will transform into a thoroughly Islamic state.

This should hardly have come as a surprise. Indeed, we could have seen the seeds of this long ago. Sadly we chose to ignore them. Back in 1977, when General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq seized power in a largely bloodless coup, he announced that he was moving his nation to a new form of sharia (Islamic) law. I was sitting in the front row of his news conference at the Rawalpindi Intercontinental when he described with some considerable relish how the hands of thieves would be amputated, the skin peeled back and the wrist bones separated.

Equally unsurprising, the nation's feared security police, the ISI, has long ago thrown in their lot with Taliban Islamists from neighboring Afghanistan, giving them aid and sanctuary as they pressed their fight first against Russian invaders, then as they switched sides in their battles against invading American and NATO forces — much as the Showtime series Homeland had been suggesting every Sunday evening this season.

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The talk in many quarters is of the Taliban's war against Pakistan. To do so is to miss the entire point. Powerful forces within Pakistan are doing their best to encourage, indeed abet, the activities of powerful terrorist forces with their roots in the northwest frontier. This is where al-Qaeda's leadership, particularly Osama bin Laden, took refuge after they and the Taliban who'd sheltered them were driven from neighboring Afghanistan.

Now, they would seem to have a still broader mandate. While many of their number are seeking to return to power in Afghanistan as American and other NATO forces withdraw, a core group of militants has seen the potential inherent in a friendly government that has the virtue of a major nuclear arsenal. And this is the ultimate danger. For Pakistan has long believed in keeping pace with the nuclear arsenal of neighboring India, and indeed may have surpassed its neighbor with 100 to 120 nuclear warheads.

For years, we've chosen to ignore this profound, perhaps existential threat, in the interests of maintaining peace on the Indian subcontinent. Clearly, the Pakistani government has hardly given American forces carte blanche to launch drone strikes on their territory, and we utterly failed to give Islamabad a heads up when we came in to get Osama bin Laden. Why? Quite rightly, we simply don't trust them.

In fact, there is pathetically little the United States can do to halt, or even slow what seems to be a death spiral in this nation that is of so critical, strategic importance to the region and ultimately the world. Pakistani military officials have assured me that under no circumstances will they allow even a single nuclear warhead to fall into terrorist hands. Nevertheless, we must be able to place ourselves in the position of trust, yet verify. Since neither India nor Pakistan has signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, neither country's nuclear arsenals is being inspected.

Still, we need desperately to begin recognizing this for the real and present danger that it represents — perhaps even more pressing than the Islamic State itself. Al Qaeda was able to launch 9/11 while it had the resources of a nation — Taliban-run Afghanistan — behind it. Imagine the possibilities with a nation like Pakistan in their hip pocket.

David A. Andelman, editor & publisher of World Policy Journal, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributorsand author ofA Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today.

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