Pakistan Seen Becoming More Islamist, Anti-US, Reuters, 11 January 2010
EXCERPT: "Pakistan is likely to become a more Islamist state and increasingly anti-American in the coming years, complicating U.S. efforts to win its support against Islamist militants, a report released on Tuesday said. The report, which looks at Pakistan over a one-to-three year time horizon, rules out the possibility of a Taliban takeover or of it becoming the world's first nuclear-armed failed state. 'Rather than an Islamist takeover, you should look at a subtle power shift from a secular pro-Western society to an Islamist anti-American one,' said Jonathan Paris, who produced the report for the Legatum Institute, a London-based think tank. Paris forecasts that Pakistan is most likely to 'muddle through', with its army continuing to play a powerful role behind the scenes in setting foreign and security policy. 'Speculation of a Taliban takeover dramatically overestimates the willingness of the political and military elites to surrender power to the Taliban,' says the report, the result of months of research on the outlook for Pakistan. Paris, who also works for the Atlantic Council of the United States, nonetheless sees Pakistan slipping away from the west at a time when Washington needs its support in Afghanistan."
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Related articles:
Is a secular Pakistan the answer? [blog], Australian National University // South Asia Masala, 19 July 2009
Islamism in Pakistan, Atlantic Council, 16 July 2009
Asia's Islamism engine, The Australian, 4 December 2008
Islamic stronghold in Pakistan goes secular, The Christian Science Monitor, 22 February 2008
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto: The death of secular democracy in Pakistan, Social Science Research Council // The Immanent Frame, 29 December 2007
Frontline Pakistan: The struggle with militant Islamism, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007
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