Cain, this Pakistan thing...

[singer]

No, we like India, because they've fought wars with China in recent history, and have the population to stand up to them.

We also don't trust India, because sooner or later they're going to want to exert that force in other areas of interest, not to mention their past dalliances with the USSR but for now, they're useful as allies of some sort.

So, how long can anyone be an ally of both India and Pakistan?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Well, everyone has to start somewhere.

I'm also presuming the US friendship with India isn't exactly predicated on the hope they will sail between the PLA(N) and Taiwan, to defend the latter from the former, and more like move 400,000 troops to the border, and go "grrrr" and stuff, if needed.  Or parade some nukes or something.

India isn't going to fuck with China's game.  If they had, they'd have done it over the Cipro scam.

[Cain]

As long as they remain the sole superpower.

[Cain]

Well, everyone has to start somewhere.

I'm also presuming the US friendship with India isn't exactly predicated on the hope they will sail between the PLA(N) and Taiwan, to defend the latter from the former, and more like move 400,000 troops to the border, and go "grrrr" and stuff, if needed.  Or parade some nukes or something.

India isn't going to fuck with China's game.  If they had, they'd have done it over the Cipro scam.

So long as the State Department keeps recommending them for advanced nuclear reactors, I'm pretty sure the Indians will tell the White House they'd march on Beijing on their own.  They wouldn't do it, of course, but hey, when someone's handing out goodies for free, why bother telling them anything but what they want to hear?

[East Coast Hustle]

I was doing some reading on the Chechen jihadis not that long ago.  Guess who started moving the Afghan mujahideen into Nagorno-Karabakh to act as special forces for the talent-strapped Azerbaijani army?  And guess who then transported them into Dagestan and Chechnya once they started getting ideas above their station about what to do now that the war was over?  Pakistan rightfully gets a lot of shit for stirring trouble in Kashmir, but they were trucking mujahideen mercenaries everywhere, back in the day.  I haven't even begun to look into some of the central Asian civil wars, but I'd be willing to bet they had a hand in them all.

Any particular reason we pretend these assbags are our allies? 

When the Trans-Afghan Pipeline gets built, a warm water port in a stable country, to sell oil to America would be nice. 

This is also why the separatists in baluchistan are such a potential problem. Gwadar is the port they need to be the terminus of the pipeline, and Gwadar would also most likely end up being the capital and/or primary port of an independent or autonomous Baluchistan. One reason it's a potential problem is that the Baluch actually have a pretty legitimate claim of ethnic and cultural distinctness from pakistan, and were actually part of the sultanate of Oman recently enough that there are still Baluch of older generations who have dual citizenship. The ties of the region to Pakistan are flimsy and not long-standing at all.

The other reason it's a potential problem is that an honest-to-god Baluch armed insurgency would likely force Iran to take a much more active and overt hand in the Afghanistan conflict. There's reason to believe that would be good for Afghanistan, in the long run, but current US foreign policy is pretty dead-set against allowing Iran to drastically expand their influence in that part of the world.

[Cain]

Yeah, Iran had a bit of input on the original invasion plans (I believe it was something to do with Hazara loyalties, since the Hazara are Shiite and a pretty big constituency in Afghanistan), but since then have been consistently left in the cold, so they've effectively washed their hands of the whole thing.  Which is why the Iranian-Afghan-Pakistan border is a free-for-all when it comes to drugs and arms right now.  No ISAF troops in those Afghan border regions either, not that they'd be much use anyway.

Either way, Iranian troops tromping around near a pipeline isn't going to make the American government happy, and despite the rumours of support for Jundullah, which I suspect is due to their opposition to Iran rather than their regional ambitions, neither will the Baloch insurgency. The Russians had lots of problems with nationalist types controlling energy terminals just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and I suspect others have learnt from their example.

[Cain]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/27/detained-americans-pakistan-nuclear-power-map

Police are trying to determine whether five Americans detained in Pakistan had planned to attack a complex that houses nuclear power facilities.

The young Muslim men, who are from the Washington DC area, were arrested in Pakistan earlier this month. Pakistani police and government officials have made a series of escalating and, at times, seemingly contradictory claims about the men's intentions. US officials have been far more cautious, but they, too, are looking at charging the men.

A Pakistani government official alleged on Saturday that the men had established contact with Taliban commanders and had planned to attack sites in Pakistan. Earlier, however, local police accused the five of intending to fight in Afghanistan after meeting militant leaders.

The men allegedly had a map of Chashma Barrage, a complex that along with nuclear power facilities houses a water reservoir and other structures, said Javed Islam, a senior police official in the Sargodha area of Punjab province where the men were arrested.

He stressed that they were not carrying a specific map of a nuclear power plant, but a map of the whole Chashma Barrage. The detained men had also exchanged emails about the area, Islam claimed. "We are also working to retrieve the deleted material in their computers," he said.

Pakistan has an arsenal of nuclear weapons, but also has nuclear power plants for civilian purposes.

Any nuclear activity in Pakistan tends to come under US scrutiny after the main architect of its atomic weapons programme, Abdul Qadeer Khan, was accused of leaking sensitive nuclear secrets. But, as militancy has spread in Pakistan, officials have repeatedly insisted that the nuclear weapons programme is secure.