Plunged into chaos after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, NATO troops may soon be working double duty in the lawless border region between Pakistsan and Afghanistan.
Until now, the 41,700-strong NATO force fighting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan has relied heavily on Pakistan's help to control the flow of insurgents over the lawless border between the two countries.
Prolonged instability following Thursday's assassination of the former prime minister could leave NATO's already strained forces with more responsibility in the dangerous region, says a former Canadian high commissioner to Pakistan.
"If the Pakistani government is occupied with trying to stay afloat, it will be much less concerned with the Taliban and the people in the tribal areas," Louis Delvoie, a former Canadian diplomat in Pakistan, told CTV.ca.
"For Canadians operating in Kandahar province, the solution is not going to come from Pakistan."
Pakistan has been rocked with chaos since the suicide attack on the moderate-leaning Bhutto, who died along with 20 others during a campaign stop leading up to the Jan. 8 elections.
President Pervez Musharraf will now likely turn his attention to regaining political stability -- away from quelling the flow of fighters, weapons and money towards the Taliban, the Islamist group struggling to regain power after being overthrown by a U.S.-led coalition in 2001.
Worry among the troops
Currently, about 100,000 Pakistani troops patrol the border, which at 1,500 kms. is approximately as long as the divide between the United States and Mexico.
According to CTV's Murray Oliver, who is stationed with Canadian troops in Afghanistan's Kandahar province, many soldiers believe border control could simply evaporate without Pakistani assistance.
"Behind the scenes, definitely there is a lot of worry, a lot of concern," Oliver told CTV's Canada AM on Friday.
"(The) Pakistani troops... are just about the only thing that manage to go keep al Qaeda and Taliban forces from moving freely back and forth into Afghanistan."
If things were to seriously escalate, Canada might even find its 2,500 troops stuck in Afghanistan, according to foreign affairs expert Eric Margolis.
"Pakistan is the world's staging area for military operations in Afghanistan and if things get too bad, these NATO forces could be isolated," he told Â鶹´«Ã½net on Thursday.
Insurgency could change focus
While many observers say the situation in Pakistan is bad news for Canadian troops, one retired general thinks otherwise.
Much like Pakistan's troops may be pulled away from the border regions, the insurgents may also be drawn into the fray in central Pakistan, suggested Canadian Maj.-Gen. (Ret.) Lewis MacKenzie -- one of the few experts predicting the threat to NATO soldiers in the region could actually decrease.
"If anything, I think it will be less threatening to our troops," he told CTV.ca on Friday.
"The folks up there on the northwest frontier enjoy killing infidels, but would enjoy a lot more taking over Pakistan. It's not going to happen, but I imagine it's their strategic intent."
MacKenzie said he expects many of the region's insurgents to be drawn into a war for power in central Pakistan, with the potential to reverse the direction of the flow of militants.
"It's fun running around Afghanistan taking on NATO, but it doesn't accomplish all that much for them," he said.
Musharraf seen as minimally effective
Despite the large number of Pakistani soldiers stationed in the border regions, international pressure has continued to rain on Musharraf to do more to quell the flow of fighters, who are often trained at facilities in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions.
Despite earning the support of the U.S. government in exchange for using Pakistan as a base for Afghanistan operations, the former army leader has continually failed to uphold his promise to stifle Taliban bases within Pakistan, said University of Toronto political science professor Aurel Braun.
"The government of Musharraf promised time and again they were going to both bring about democracy in Pakistan and fight extremism in Pakistan, particularly the lands adjoining Afghanistan," he told Â鶹´«Ã½net on Friday. "The Musharraf government has done neither.
"We have coddled a dictatorial regime in the hope they will be changed . . . What is very important here is... for the rest of us to learn the right kind of lessons. Among these lessons I would suggest is that we look for alternatives to dictators."
Protecting Canadian forces
Canada's military must prepare for a worst-case scenario, said Braun, something that may eventually involve pushing into Pakistan itself.
"At some point, NATO might have no choice but to act in a trans-border fashion in Pakistan in order to protect the emerging democracy in Afghanistan and to protect its own forces," he said.
That, however, would involve an increase in troops -- a long, labourious process that involves parliamentary approval and months of politics.
As far as MacKenzie is concerned, the current situation is only one of many worthwhile reasons that NATO countries should dedicate more troops to Afghanistan.
"If this doesn't stimulate them to commit more troops, nothing will," he said, noting there's little the current deployment of soldiers could do to prepare for an influx of insurgents.
"The consciousness of a possible increase in threat is probably keeping them busy, but there's very little they can do. They just don't have the resources... You don't talk about going on alert in a war zone, you're on alert all the time."
