Can Pakistan Experience A Khmer Rouge Type Genocide?

Could U.S. Air Strikes Push Pakistan into Khmer Rouge Type Genocide? -- Alertnet

As in the 1960s in Cambodia, U.S. air strikes are having a devastating effect in Pakistan, not just on the targeted communities, but on public consciousness throughout the region.

Almost every day, reports come back from the CIA’s “secret” battlefield in the Pakistani tribal borderlands. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles -- that is, pilot-less drones -- shoot missiles (18 of them in a single attack on a tiny village last week) or drop bombs and then the news comes in: a certain number of al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders or suspected Arab or Uzbek or Afghan “militants” have died. The numbers are often remarkably precise. Sometimes they are attributed to U.S. sources, sometimes to the Pakistanis; sometimes, it’s hard to tell where the information comes from. In the Pakistani press, on the other hand, the numbers that come back are usually of civilian dead. They, too, tend to be precise.

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My Comment: Pakistan's war with its Islamic extremists has been ongoing for years .... and US participation was never a factor then. However .... this situation is changing as the US war against the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies starts to enter an expanded phase. The fact that the Taliban and the Pakistani media have highlighted drone strikes and casualties (real or not) .... have purposely (willingly or not) created a political environment in Pakistan that is now becoming poisonous.

But can this push Pakistan into a Khmer Rouge type of genocide? .... on this point I have my doubts. Pakistan is a country that is made up of different ethnic and cultural groups of which the ethnic groups that make up the Taliban is just a small minority. The idea that the Taliban can seize power in a country of which they are just a small minority .... no .... the pakistani state is not that weak .... yet.