What the US may be up to in Pakistan

A story in the Asia Times (via tomahawk6):

US homes in on militants in Pakistan

Some salt may be required; nonetheless:

Senior Qaeda leader with links to Taliban is reported killed

More on the US and Pakistan here.

Update: And what if Pakistan goes fissiparous? That's a real worry in itself and because it might well mean the break-up of Afstan too:

...as matters stand, the Punjabi-dominated regime of Pervez Musharraf is headed for a bloody confrontation with the country’s Pashtun, Baluch and Sindhi minorities that could well lead to the breakup of Pakistan into three sovereign entities.

In that event, the Pashtuns, concentrated in the northwestern tribal areas, would join with their ethnic brethren across the Afghan border (some 40 million of them combined) to form an independent “Pashtunistan.” The Sindhis in the southeast, numbering 23 million, would unite with the six million Baluch tribesmen in the southwest to establish a federation along the Arabian Sea from India to Iran. “Pakistan” would then be a nuclear-armed Punjabi rump state.

In historical context, such a breakup would not be surprising. There had never been a national entity encompassing the areas now constituting Pakistan...

Selig S. Harrison is the director of the Asia program at the Center for International Policy and the author of “In Afghanistan’s Shadow,” a study of Baluch nationalism.