PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A series of upheavals in South Asia has set off a chain reaction that a growing number of middle-class and professional Pakistanis say is pushing this historically unstable country--now capable of building nuclear weapons--to the edge of political and economic chaos.
The U.S. missile strikes last week on neighboring Afghanistan sent the latest shock to a nation already straining from economic disintegration, an increasingly emboldened Islamic fundamentalist movement, and U.S. economic sanctions imposed when Pakistan, along with India, became one of the world's two new nuclear powers.
"What you have is a slide into chaos," said Maleeha Lodhi, a former ambassador to the United States and the editor of the News, a prominent English-language newspaper. "The economy is collapsing, the mainstream parties are discredited, and the extremists are gaining ground."
The U.S. missile strike Thursday in Afghanistan has emboldened extremist Islamic groups--already heartened by the success of the fundamentalist Taliban movement there--and they have accused the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of cooperating with the U.S. military operation, which also targeted Sudan.
That criticism, combined with an economic situation that has rapidly disintegrated since the nuclear tests in May, has left Pakistan unsettled and on the verge of defaulting on its foreign debt.
The imploding economy is helping to push members of a precarious middle class--a bulwark of the nation's stability--away from the two main political parties and toward radical Islamic groups, which advocate a repudiation of Pakistan's foreign debt and the establishment of an Iranian-style theocracy.
"The people of this country are fed up with the two parties, and they are looking for a third option," said Zafar Khan, who sells gun belts and leather goods at a bazaar here. "That could be the religious parties."
U.S. Fears Sale of Nuclear Technology
That prospect is deeply troubling to U.S. leaders, who have led the effort to isolate Pakistan's economy since the nuclear tests and whose missile attacks on Afghanistan across Pakistani territory exposed Sharif to virulent political criticism. They are concerned that a Pakistan in turmoil would be less able to control its nuclear arsenal and more likely to sell nuclear technology to other countries.
"An economic collapse could lead to a political crisis," said Len Scensny, a spokesman for the State Department in Washington.
