Pakistan: Stuck Between a War and a Risk for Retribution

Flikr photo by calamur taken during the 2006 train bombings in Mumbai. Used under a Creative Commons license. PCR Project Co-Director Karin von Hippel was quoted by The Jewish Week on the implications for the Mumbai terrorist attacks on the political situation in Pakistan. 

Pakistan “may not be on the brink of political collapse, but it could deteriorate further, and that is what we have to worry about.”

The fragility of the political situation in Pakistan, as well as the state of India-Pakistan relations, will require some serious attention from the incoming Obama administration.  The long-term political implications of the Mumbai attacks have yet to be realized.  Already, plans to improve economic cooperation between India and Pakistan, the first since the 1947, have been put on hold.  Today, The Times of India published a story that the ISI, Pakistan’s national spy agency, gave protection to Lashkar-e-Toiba during the Mumbai attacks. The threat of India to Pakistan, which was once labeled a distraction by some to the more pressing issue of the tribal region bordering Afghanistan, has now materialized into a crisis that cannot be temporarily set-aside.