A warning worth listening too.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\07\18\story_18-7-2007_pg7_4
Ex-commanders says Pakistan could be next Afghanistan
By Iqbal Khattak
PESHAWAR: There is a serious risk of Pakistan going the way of Afghanistan if the state and Islamist militants remain in conflict, say former Afghan commanders who fought in the jihad against Soviet forces.
Afghanistan has been ravaged by almost continuous war since the late 1970s, when mujahideen challenged the Moscow-backed regime in Kabul. With growing unrest in the NWFP and the tribal areas, where there have been repeated suicide attacks on security forces, Pakistan is exhibiting similar symptoms to Afghanistan, the Afghan commanders say. “Pakistan may face a worse crisis than Afghanistan as this country has nuclear weapons,” former Afghan commander Haji Muhammad Zaman warned.
Pakistan was the transit route for US-backed Muslim volunteers and weapons sent into Afghanistan against the Red Army occupation and Balochistan and NWFP bore the brunt of the wave of “Islamisation” that the military regime of Gen Ziaul Haq, with US-backing, promoted to inflict defeat on the former Soviet Union. Peshawar was the de facto capital of the Afghan resistance against the communists.
Zaman said the angry reaction of people in NWFP and the tribal areas to the Lal Masjid operation shows and suicide attacks on security forces show how deeply radicalised the Pashtuns have become.
“How can you change the people so soon who underwent 30 years of radicalisation? Excessive use of force is no solution to keep people away from what we call extremism,” the Afghan commander said. In 2007, the phenomenon of ‘Talibanisation’ has spilled over into several Frontier districts from Waziristan. “Things are happening even outside Waziristan now,” Haji Masood Khan, former commander for Afghan leader Pir Syed Ahmed Gilani, told Daily Times. “There is a danger that Pakistan may go Afghanistan’s way as I look at the current situation in this country.”
Khan said though Afghanistan’s case was different than that of Pakistan, there was still “cause for great concern” for Afghanistan as serious disturbances in Pakistan were not a good omen for that country.
Zaman said as long as “flames engulf Afghanistan” there is every possibility that it would affect Pakistan. “Extremists in this country are far more extreme than extremists of other countries and in the given situation no-one will let Pakistan live like this.” Afghan journalist Janullah Hashimzada grew up in Pakistan after he fled Afghanistan at the age of seven in 1980 when the jihad against the Soviet occupation was gaining momentum. **“We made an emotional decision to call the war a jihad and I would like to tell the people of Pakistan not to make such an emotional decision that may sink them deeper into crisis,” Hashimzada, 35, said.
“You people do not know where all this will lead you,” **the Afghan journalist said. “If Pakistan goes Afghanistan’s way it will affect the whole Muslim world.”
He appealed to both the militants and the government of President Gen Pervez Musharraf to “let sanity prevail over emotions” and Pakistan and Afghanistan live in complete peace.