ENDGAME:

Pakistan comes out fighting (Syed Saleem Shahzad, 12/21/05, Asia Times)

With a number of regional oil and gas pipeline projects involving Pakistan in the offing, Islamabad is determined to take advantage of them, both in terms of potential transit revenue and in meeting the country's growing energy needs.

The problem, though, is that the projects involve highly restive Balochistan province, where tribals have for years waged a low-intensity rebellion against the central government, in part to demand a better share of the economic pie of the resource-rich province.

Now the Pakistan government wants to secure the region once and for all, and believes that the only way to do it is through forcibly "urbanizing" Balochistan's tribes.

The War on Terror has always been destined to end in the tribal areas of western Pakistan, which are essentially ungoverned.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 20, 2005 12:56 PM