Taliban advances in Pakistan "very serious"

Former CIA Islamabad Station Chief Robert Grenier speaks to CNN about Pakistan's fight against the Taliban.

Pakistani authorities on Thursday deployed paramilitary troops to a district, only 60 miles from the capital, where Taliban militants appeared to be consolidating control after this week's land-grab. Yesterday, we learned of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s fears about the Taliban's power grab, and how it's threatening Pakistan, an important U.S. ally who has nuclear weapons.

“I think that we cannot underscore the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan by the continuing advances now within hours of Islamabad that are being made by a loosely confederated group of terrorists and others who are seeking the overthrow of the Pakistani state; which is, as we all know, a nuclear-armed state.”

Just how dire is the situation there? Robert Grenier, former CIA Station Chief in Islamabad, spoke with John Roberts on CNN’s “American Morning” Thursday.

John Roberts: You know this area as well as anybody. You heard the secretary of state’s warning. David Kilcullen, an advisor to the Obama administration who also knows that area very well, says Pakistan is in danger of collapse. How dire do you think the situation there is?

Robert Grenier: The situation is very serious. I'm very concerned about it as are most of the specialists who study that region. The trends are all very bad. I don't think that the country is in danger of imminent collapse, however.

Roberts: We see the Taliban rolling through the northwest provinces in a similar fashion to the way it rolled through Afghanistan when it took over after the Soviet Union rolled out. Once the Taliban starts gaining momentum, how quickly could it overrun that entire region?

Grenier: This isn’t like a civil war in the Congo. It’s not a large rebel army that is somehow sweeping forward. Their progress is actually much more insidious than that. These are relatively limited numbers of well-armed fighters. They’re winning the battle through intimidation. They're moving in to areas where they're intimidating the local people. They’re killing a few police and intimidating them, getting them to stay in their station houses or flee altogether. And the state has not marshaled the forces available to it to effectively resist these people. They could do so if they chose to.

Roberts: CNN spoke on the phone this morning with Major General Athar Abbas, the Pakistani military spokesman. He said, “The Taliban will either move out or be thrown out one way or another.” But as you say, the Pakistani military has thus far been pretty ineffective against the Taliban in that northwest region.

Grenier: There are a number of reasons for that. One is that they don't want to take matters into their own hands. They only want to do things with civilian support and there's been a great deal of wishful thinking on the part of Pakistani politicians. One hopes that is beginning to change. We're seeing some signs that it may be changing. The other big challenge for the Pakistan army is that they're simply not equipped; either through training or doctrine to engage in an effective counter-insurgency campaign. It's a conventional army and it’s equipped to fight with India.

Roberts: Pakistan is a nuclear-armed nation. It has somewhere between 50 and 100 warheads. Nobody is exactly sure. What would the consequences be of the Taliban getting their hands on one or more of those weapons and what’s the potential that they possibly could?

Grenier: You almost don't want to even think about nuclear weapons in the hands of the Taliban. We're far from that point right now. Those weapons, as far as anyone knows, are firmly in the control of the Pakistan army. The Pakistan army is not about to fall to the Taliban. That said, the current trends, unless arrested, could lead us to that point.