MICHAEL BURLEIGH: Forget Afghanistan and Iraq, will World War III start in Pakistan?

The U.S. and its Allies have more than 150,000 troops in Iraq.

President Obama has just promised a further 17,000 soldiers will be sent to Afghanistan - to join the tens of thousands already fighting an increasingly desperate and intractable war against the Taliban.

Yet neither of these countries present the terrifying threat to world stability that exists in Pakistan. This nuclear-armed state, long ruled by a grotesque litany of corrupt dictators and riven with militant Islamists, has now fallen into murderous anarchy. What's more, it is the world's seventh most populated nation, with at least 170 million people within its fragile borders.
If World War III were to break out anywhere, Pakistan would be a most likely contender.
Nothing could better illustrate the extent of the danger we all face than the brazen way in which terrorists this week were able to attack the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team.

The Pakistani government was fully aware that the team would have been a prime target for terrorists - indeed India, England, Australia and South Africa all refuse to play there because of the threat - yet it was unable to prevent its streets from running once again with blood.

The truth is that murder and barbarous mayhem are now endemic in Pakistan as Islamist extremists have taken over vast swathes of the country from the government which rules, nominally, from the capital Islamabad.

So anarchic have parts of Pakistan become that conditions there are now approximating those in war-torn Afghanistan. That is certainly the view of Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's special envoy to the region, who has described the situation in Pakistan as 'dire'.
Indeed, in memos to the White House administration, he amalgamates these two lawless countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan, describing them as the problem of 'Af-Pak'.

The truth is that both countries are ruled by corrupt leaders - President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, who has placed all his friends and family in positions of power, and President Asif Ali Zardari in Pakistan, who has salted away millions - with whom the West is rapidly running out of patience.

Vast areas of north-western Pakistan are already in the clutches of Taliban militants who are sheltering Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden and the rest of the Al-Qaeda leadership.
This is an enormous region of some 90,000 square miles where even now British Islamist volunteers are being trained in the arts of terror which they may bring back to Britain's streets.
The Pakistani army has deployed 100,000 troops to this vast lawless area, but their heart is not in the fight and they are failing to make an impact because the region is so huge, wild and mountainous.

Yes, in the Bajour province they have flattened 5,000 houses and killed many militants, but they spend most of their time huddling nervously in their barracks amidst a vast area controlled by the Taliban. The Taliban have also succeeded in disrupting the vital Khyber Pass which is the U.S. and NATO's main route for supplies shipped to its troops in Afghanistan via Karachi, the main port and financial capital of Pakistan.

In a deal that has received much western criticism, the Pakistani government has already formally surrendered one of its most treasured north western provinces to the Taliban - the green and lush Swat Valley.
This is no tribally-run hellhole, but a mainstream state which is perhaps one of the most beautiful highland landscapes on earth and known as the 'Switzerland of Pakistan'.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is known as Mr Ten Per Cent 'because he corruptly demands a slice of every deal' The agreement is supposedly in return for the Taliban laying down their arms, but without proper law enforcement - of which there is scant evidence - who is to say they will do so.

Already, the Taliban have introduced an especially primitive form of sharia law in the Swat Valley. They have also burned down 300 girls' schools and closed down all the rest. The Taliban radio station announces the names of people their death squads intend to kill.
Their corpses are often dumped next to Pakistani police stations to emphasise who is really in charge.

One of the Taliban's first acts on being given control of the Swat Valley was to kill a Pakistani TV reporter of whom they disapproved because of the way he covered their triumphal entry into the region's main city of Mingaora. But the Swat Valley aside, one of the most disturbing indications of Pakistan's fall into lawlessness of all is the creeping Talibanisation of Karachi.
This was where the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in 2002 from a restaurant, his corpse turning up later after he had been beheaded.

Ironically, part of the reason for the Taliban moving into Karachi is that U.S. air strikes have made life uncomfortable in their traditional homelands in the north-west frontier regions.
Entire sectors of this teeming city, whose population is estimated at between 12 and 18 million, are now out of government control after the Taliban has moved in.

The militants hide among the vast immigrant population of impoverished Pashtuns - the same tribe as the Taliban - who migrated to Karachi looking for work, much to the vexation of the city's middle-class Urdu speaking population. The result of this Taliban infiltration is that it is unsafe for any foreigner to venture into its warren-like Pashtun quarters.

The fact is that, despite the vast sums of aid money that western countries pour into Pakistan, the country has become a failed state. Furthermore, its ruling elites do not seem to be engaging with the problem. Appallingly corrupt, they are instead primarily concerned with internal political battles and the conflict with India in Kashmir.

Take their leader President Zardari himself.
He has refused to re-appoint Iftikhar Chaudhry, the Chief Justice sacked by the deposed General Pervez Musharraf, mainly because the Chief Justice's first investigation would be into the corrupt Zardari himself. Not for nothing is he popularly known as Mr Ten Per Cent (because he corruptly demands a slice of every deal).

He has also recently banned his main political rival, Nawaz Sharif, from holding political office, triggering days of violent street protests by Sharif's supporters. In other words, Pakistani's elites are like ferrets squabbling in a sack, when all the country's energies need to be focused on halting a creeping Islamist takeover.

The Pakistani army claim to be fighting Mullah Omar, who controls all the Taliban in 'Af-Pak' but in reality their real interest is in influencing the ultimate outcome of the war in Afghanistan and gaining increasing control in the country, where India is also vying for dominance.
Meanwhile, the Taliban themselves are intent on taking over whole swathes of Pakistan, hoping to form a large Islamist Emirate on the Afghan-Pakistan border. The result is a terrifying tinderbox.

Although we have been fighting in Afghanistan for six years, the reality is that the war may just be starting in Pakistan - a nuclear-armed country of 170 million with its huge immigrant diaspora living in our midst.

This lethally volatile situation is deeply, deeply worrying.

• MICHAEL BURLEIGH'S Blood And Rage is published in paperback next month by Harper Collins.