08 January,2009 12:16 PM IST | | PTI
Terming the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan as the "most dangerous place" in the world, a US-based think-tank has asked the incoming Obama administration to declare it a part of the Afghan war theatre.
Observing that a "nuclear Pakistan as a base for international terrorism is a prospect that the world cannot afford," the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) asked the US government to redefine the territory of war in the region to include FATA.
This, it said, would help CENTCOM the US Central Command to cooperate with the Pakistan army in both military and economic development efforts as needed and agreed on by both the countries.
The observations were part of a report "FATA A Most Dangerous Place" authored by Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistani journalist, who has just been appointed as the first Director of the South Asia Centre at the Atlantic Council of the US.
"FATA remains a most dangerous place, with the failure of governance and the rise of militancy affecting Afghanistan and Pakistan not only individually and separately but also jointly," Nawaz said, concluding his observations.
"A nuclear Pakistan as a base for international terrorism is a prospect that the world cannot afford," he said.
Author of the book "Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army and the War Within" released last year, Nawaz was the first war correspondent of Pakistani Television in 1971, according to his bio put on his website.
In his foreward to the report, Arnaud De Borchgrave, director Transnational Threats, CSIS said: "Pakistan is the ground zero in the US-jihadist war."
