"[...] and can that happen without the policy against militants going in further turmoil?"
--A "senior western diplomat" quoted below

'Further' turmoil? Pakistan is a country which has already handed over the NWF Provinces - almost a third of the country - entirely and completely to the militants and which has, as of today's date, shown no desire to reclaim them.

Already, there are attacks in the Home provinces and intelligent Pakistanis are transferring their wealth abroad and making ready to flee. Pakistan is a lost cause and will be a Taliban controlled entity within the next three to five years - mark my words - unless the West wakes up and sees things there for what they really are and takes the necessary steps.

Pakistan is a lost cause, but, much more dangerously for us, Pakistan is a lost cause with a nuclear capability and a Military which, for very dishonorable reasons, will side with the fundamentalists in order to protect its own wealth.

It is important to realise that the vast bulk of the Pakistani population actually support Al-Qaeda - that they see themselves, erroneously, as victims of Western Imperialism, with the USA as the pivotal imperial power. They do not attribute their own poverty to their own ineptitude, but, rather, to a fictional international conspiracy against muslims led by the USA and originating in Israel.

Most reporting about Pakistan is conducted by people who seldom venture beyond the confines of Islamabad and by people who are, by conditioning or nature, profoundly anti-Western and anti-Semitic. Those self-same reporters are also blinded by their pre-conceived notion that Pakistan, by virtue of being a country in this twenty-first century, cannot fall into militant Islamist hands.

Some people, obviously, simply don't understand what the example of Afghanistan demonstrates. Unless things change significantly, Pakistan will be Taliban Pakistan within the next three to five years.

Then we'll be playing in a completely different ball-park! One that goes 'boom, millions dead' very easily indeed!