Richard, several points:

1. Pakistan has long been a ‘bomb-a-month’ country, giving lie to instituional stability.

2. Pakistan has not less than 30,000 and as many as 80,000 new madrassas built since the collapse of the Soviet Union; 15% are estimated to be radicalized. That’s roughly 5,000 to 9,000 radical Pakistani madrassas, graduating between 50,000 to 300,000 radicalized students every year. The madrassas, like the Pakistani Army, are considered sacrosanct in Pakistani culture.

Isn’t the ISI key here? The ISI in Pakistan has deep tribal ties to the tribes providing safe haven for Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in the two Waziristan provinces.

Pakistan has the Deobandi and Mawdudi, fierce puritans who provide intellectual justifications for Islamic revolution, just as Ruhollah Khomeini did in Iran.

If the Shah’s entire US financed and trained army and secret police were completely unable to stop one old man from mounting a radical Islamic revolution from his pulpit, why is the Pakistani Army and the ISI going to be able to hold Pakistan together in the face of Mawdudist calls for revolution?