CENTCOM Advisor gives Pakistan six months before it collapses

Washington, Mar.23 (ANI): While the political leadership in Pakistan is making an effort to reconcile and stabilise the country, the United States still feels that danger looms large over the country collapsing completely within the next six months.

The top Advisor to the US Central Command (CENTCOM), David Kilcullen has expressed serious concern over the rising extremism in Pakistan, and said that it could prove detrimental to the world peace.

"Pakistan has 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the US Army, and al-Qaeda headquarters sitting right there in the two-thirds of the country that the government doesn't control," Kilcullen said.

Kilcullen considered Pakistan as the 'central front' in the US led 'war on terror'.

He termed Pakistan as a 'rogue state', as the military, police and intelligence did not follow their democratic set-up and have an execution set-up of their own.

"The collapse of Pakistan, al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons, an extremist takeover, that would dwarf everything we've seen in the war on terror today," the Dawn quoted Kilcullen, as saying.

Furthermore, commenting on the US's failure to get hold of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in its eight year long battle, the advisor to the CENTCOM commander General David H. Petraeus said it was not important to kill Laden, as it will not end the war on terror, and would make him a martyr among his associates.

He said Al-Qaeda terror can only end when people of the region vow to get rid of this menace.

Kilcullen also sighted a possible end to the Al-Qaeda network and its activities.

"A tribal raiding party captures bin Laden, puts him on television and says, 'You are a traitor to Islam and you have killed more Muslims than you have killed infidels, and we're now going to deal with you.' They could either then try and execute the guy in accordance with their own laws or hand him over to the International Criminal Court.If that happened, that would be the end of the al-Qaeda myth," he added. (ANI)