The Most Dangerous Place: Pakistan's Lawless Frontier Book

A few years ago a French newsmagazine also labeled Pakistan as the 'Most Dangerous Country on the Planet'. The bleak portrait painted in this book bears this out.

After many years of supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan from their FATA region, these religious fanatics have boomeranged back into Pakistan with a vengeance. They have literally become a Frankenstein that has returned to devastate their creator.

The FATA territories are a free-for-all area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. They are technically part of Pakistan but are a separate legal entity. As Mr. Gul explains in his book there are several independent religious groups vying for power in the different agencies (provinces) of FATA. They have metastasized from the Afghan Taliban to form their own groups. They are now even causing havoc in Pakistan proper as they are trying to install their power base of intolerance in urban areas.

The Pakistan army has tried over the last few years to dislodge the militants from their various strongholds in FATA with varying degrees of success. Mr. Gul qualifies these 'victories' in different agencies as factions migrant from one area to another or may form temporary peace accords and try to regroup. But the Pakistan army, at great cost, has managed to kill several leaders and has crippled some of the militant groups.

FATA is an extremely remote and rugged terrain with a porous boundary to Afghanistan. Many tribes can legally move between the two countries. For decades FATA has been ignored and forgotten by the Pakistani government, except as a thru-way to Afghanistan. There is poverty and illiteracy. The religious militants have flourished in this atmosphere. Parallel states have developed - there are in fact several parallel states in some agencies - the Taliban aligned with Al Qaeda, drug lords and the alleged government whose members cannot even reside in their constituencies due to death threats or actual murders, kidnappings…

The Pakistani army and government have an uphill battle to rid this land of these medieval religious tyrants and to establish an effective law and order government that will provide an effective education for boys and girls. Only then will the world be safe from this collection of pariah states within Pakistan. Towards the end the author offers a glimmer of hope because there is now more trust and cooperation between the Pakistani government and army and the new U.S. administration of President Obama.

Perhaps another glimmer of hope is that in the areas controlled by the religious groups the brutality and intolerance is so extreme it is hard to understand how such regimes can last, but this is Pakistan where life has become subverted by religion.

The author does an excellent review of the conditions in the agencies of FATA and how change has occurred since 9/11. This book gives a complete picture of all the competing groups in this vitally important area of the world.