Taliban Close in on Capitol.

(April 23, 2009) ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Taliban militants have established control of a strategically important area only 70 miles from the capital, law enforcement officials said Wednesday. The move is part of an unrelenting push by the Taliban toward the heart of Pakistan.

Heavily armed militants were patrolling villages and local police had retreated to their station houses in much of the city of Buner, a rural area adjacent to Swat, where the Taliban seized control from the Pakistani army in February, they said. Buner is a gateway to a major Pakistani city, Mardan.

“They take over Buner, then they roll into Mardan and that’s the end of the game,” a senior law enforcement official in the North West Frontier Province said.

The expansion of the Taliban into Buner comes 10 days after the government of President Asif Ali Zardari agreed to the introduction of Sharia law in Swat, a move that the Obama administration has criticized as too much of a concession to the Taliban.

Note: Should the Taliban sieze control of Pakistan, theoretically they would control Pakistans nuclear arsenal. My friends from India say India would never allow that to happen, since it would be akin to Israel sitting by while Lebanon (Hezbollah) acquired nukes ...

And just in case you think I am being overly paranoid...this just in from AP news:

Analysts say the decision by the Pakistani parliament and President Asif Ali Zardari to allow Sharia, or Islamic law, in parts of the nation's northwest appears to have backfired.

Instead of bringing peace to a region where hundreds have died in fighting between the Taliban and the Pakistani military, the agreement seems to have emboldened the militants who have not put down their weapons.

Taliban fighters are now spreading their control over larger parts of the North-West Frontier Province, moving closer to the capital, Islamabad.

Speaking recently before the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used unusually blunt language, accusing the Pakistani government of "abdicating" to the Taliban and other extremists.

"We cannot underscore [enough] the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan by the continuing advances, now within hours of Islamabad that are being made by a loosely-confederated group of terrorists and others who are seeking the overthrow of the Pakistani state, which is, as we all know, a nuclear armed state," she said.