A Nuclear Taliban?

By Hal Lindsey

The Pakistani Taliban, even while continuing their penetration of central Pakistan, have begun mobilizing fresh recruits from all over the country to go help their Afghan Taliban brothers resist the newly arriving Western troops. The Taliban now control the tribal regions of Pakistan, huge sections of the Swat Valley and have just consolidated their control over the district of Buner, just 60 miles from Islamabad. They've set up checkpoints while the government negotiates a Swat Valley-like truce aimed at holding back the insurgency by ceding territory to them.

Pakistan was one of only two nations on earth that recognized the Taliban as Afghanistan's legitimate government (the other being Osama's home country of Saudi Arabia). Many ranking members of the Pak security service, the ISI, are members of the Taliban, as they were in 2002 when Pakistan initially faced off against Washington over Osama bin Laden. Still reeling from 9/11, the Bush administration gave Pervez Musharraf a choice. He could side with the U.S. or he could side with the Afghani Taliban and share in their fate. Wisely, Musharraf chose to side with the U.S. That was then. This is now.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made headlines last weekend during an interview with Fox News.

"If the worst, the unthinkable, were to happen, and this advancing Taliban encouraged and supported by al-Qaida and other extremists were to essentially topple the government for failure to beat them back, then they would have the keys to the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan."

A New York Times editorial over the weekend asks,

"If the army cannot or will not defend its own territory against the militants, how can anyone be sure it will protect Pakistan's 60 or so nuclear weapons?" – noting that "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was right last week when she warned that Pakistan was 'abdicating to the Taliban.'"

The Washington Post published a column by Pakistani journalist Mohammed Hanif who assessed the situation this way:

"As a Taliban insurgency gains strength in Pakistan, my country seems to be preparing to surrender. In areas where the Taliban formally hold sway, such as Swat, people have bowed to their guns. And in the heartland, in Punjab and other regions, there is a disquieting acceptance of the inevitability of the Taliban's rise to power."

The possibility of a nuclear-armed Taliban in Pakistan is a grave threat to global security, but it also poses an unthinkably dangerous threat to America. For years, Congress has dithered over the threat posed to the U.S. homeland by a massive EMP pulse. A nuclear weapon detonated about 180 miles above the U.S. would send out an EMP pulse that would blanket most of the nation with a powerful burst of gamma rays. Depending on where it is detonated, the pulse could cover the entire continent.

Such a blast would be hardly noticeable except as a flash in the sky. No explosion, no noise, no visible destruction. But the heavy voltage surges would burn out the electronics in most vehicles and communications devices. Any electronics equipment (and most electrical equipment of any type) hooked up to the power or phone grids would be immediately destroyed, including all types of computing devices and the data they contain. Evidence exists of keen interest in EMP by terrorists and their allies. Iran has tested versions of its Shahab missiles in trajectories ending in midflight explosions, exactly as would be expected of an EMP strike. Both North Korea's ICBM launches allegedly "failed" when they blew up in flight. What if they weren't failures?

Bible prophecy recognizes four major spheres of political power in the last days: the kings of the east, the king of the south, the Gog-Magog Alliance and the Revived Roman Empire of the antichrist.

Today, the world is divided up essentially along those lines: China and its sphere of influence, Russia and its satellites, the Islamic world and the EU and the West. But there is also America, the world's only superpower and therefore in a class by itself. There is no mention in Scripture of a fifth superpower resembling America. There are a number of possible reasons for this. Perhaps the Rapture so decimates the country that it is unable to get its act together soon enough to play a role in the Tribulation. Maybe America's ideological civil war so divides it as to render it irrelevant. Or maybe an EMP pulse detonated high above America's heartland, rendering it irrelevant in a single, blinding flash. Just think about all the nations that hate us that possess this technological capability. Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan – and soon Iran – all are capable of this kind of attack.

Exactly how God intends to fulfill His outline of future history is known only to Him. What is important to us is that no matter the details, the outcome is the same. And since we are unquestionably in the last days, the question of America's decline from power will be answered very soon.

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