Bloodbath in Pakistan

Before today, I never heard of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, or PIPS. This week, PIPS released a report (PDF) that totaled up the number of violent deaths in Pakistan for 2009, as well as their causes.

More than 3000 Pakistanis were killed by terrorist attacks, with another 7000 injured. Of those, 1300 were killed as a result of 87 suicide bombings. By way of comparison, the Brookings Index reports that a little more than 2000 Afghan civilians were killed in 2008, with slightly less than 2000 killed in the first ten months of 2009.

Whether you call it one big war or two related wars is mostly semantics. Bottom line, Pakistan is at war. Some ask whether the Obama administration knows its at war. The much bigger problem is that the Pakistani military and intelligence services aren’t fully committed to the right side.