Pakistan is edging closer to becoming an Islamist state—which would make it an ally of the Taliban rather than the West. This has dire implications for the stability of the nuclear-armed nation and for the Afghanistan war.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for Pakistan’s military said the peace agreement concluded February 17 between the provincial government in the country’s North-West Frontier Province and the Taliban has given the Islamist terrorist group the ability to regroup in that area. The agreement handed over the greater Swat region to the Taliban, allowing it to enforce its Islamist sharia law, supposedly in exchange for an end to its insurgency. That the Taliban clearly does not intend to uphold its end of the bargain is hardly a surprise. The terrorist group is merely using the promise of peace to manipulate the Pakistani government into handing it more power.

Islamabad, however, is allowing itself to be pushed into an increasingly untenable situation. Just last week, April 13, the Pakistani government formally ratified the February 17 peace deal. While the capitulation by the local government was a reflection of who really holds the power in the Swat tribal district, the national government’s stamp of approval on the agreement represented, in Stratfor’s words, “an acknowledgment of defeat on the part of the state”—making it extremely difficult for the state to ever regain control of this part of the country.

An overwhelming majority in Parliament approved the sharia deal, and the country’s president signed off on it. “Allowing a special political and legal dispensation in a given part of its territory essentially amounts to recognizing the autonomy of the region in question,” said Stratfor (April 14).

This recognition of what amounts to a Taliban emirate makes it increasingly likely that Pakistan will become an Islamist state. A growing number of U.S. officials fear just that, according to an April 16 McClatchy report. “It’s a disaster in the making on the scale of the Iranian revolution,” one U.S. intelligence official said.

A Pentagon adviser had this to say:

The place is beyond redemption. I don’t see any plausible scenario under which the present government or its most likely successor will mobilize the economic, political and security resources to push back this rising tide of violence.I think Pakistan is moving toward a situation where the extremists control virtually all of the countryside and the government controls only the urban centers.

Last weekend, Maulana Sufi Muhammad, leader of the Taliban group in the Swat region, denounced Pakistan’s constitution, parliament and Supreme Court for being un-Islamic, and called for sharia law to be imposed throughout Pakistan. Maulana Abdul Aziz, the imam who instigated the uprising that led to the raid on the Red Mosque back in 2007, made similar comments after he was released on bail, calling on Pakistanis to be prepared to sacrifice in order for Islamic law to be enforced nationwide. “The Taliban not only have shown that they are unwilling to disarm,” writes Stratfor, “but their ambitions are escalating from a local to a national level” (April 22).

The direction Pakistan is going will make it increasingly difficult for the U.S. and nato to make progress in Afghanistan. It is likely that supply lines will become even more insecure or be cut completely. “… Western forces are looking at a long conflict,” said Stratfor, “one in which the jihadists, and not the United States and nato, will have the advantage called Pakistan” (op. cit.).

Herbert W. Armstrong gets to the core of the problem America faces in his book The United States and Britain in Prophecy:

You need to wake up to the fact that the United States, even still possessing unmatched power, is afraid—fears—to use it, just as God said: “I will break the pride of your power”; that the United States has stopped winning wars—that America was unable, with all its vast power, to conquer little North Vietnam! The United States is fast riding to the greatest fall that ever befell any nation!

Mr. Armstrong made these statements based on prophecies in Leviticus 26 as well as many others in the Bible. These prophecies explain why, despite its superior military, America seems helpless in making headway in Afghanistan. Request your own free copy of The United States and Britain in Prophecy for a detailed explanation of how America has arrived at this point, and what is ahead for this nation.