Poor Pakistan. Besieged by the radical Islamic Taliban militants, enduring waves of its internally displaced citizens, and facing widespread indifference from the international community to its growing humanitarian plight, the South Asian state teeters on the brink of a wider chasm. Though the Pakistan army has dealt a serious blow to Taliban insurgents in the mountainous Northwest frontier province, the collateral damage from the successful military offensive has been over two million civilians fleeing the fighting.
Pakistan's unruly Northwest Frontier province has traditionally been a lawless no-go zone for the central government. The region bordering on Afghanistan, and connected ethnically and in sympathy to events in that country, has nurtured a militant Islamic resistance which is marinated in a culture of guns, drugs, and chaos; the perfect conditions in which the fundamentalist Taliban thrive. Regions like the picturesque Swat valley and cities like Peshawar, have never coexisted with the central government, no matter who is in power in Islamabad, the capital.
