The Most Dangerous Place: Pakistan's Lawless Frontier »

Imtiaz Gul has been reporting on Islamist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan since the late 80s. He has written extensively for Pakistan's Friday Times and News and reported for CNN and Al Jazeera. He is the author of The Unholy Nexus: Pak-Afghan Relations under the Taliban and heads the Center for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad.

The story of the dark side of the Afghan war - and how Pakistan degenerated into a nuclear-armed powder keg

Eight years ago we chased the Taliban from Kabul and forced Al Qaeda to find a new home. One by one the militants crossed the border into Pakistan and settled in its tribal areas, building alliances with locals and terrorizing or bribing their way to power. This place - Pakistan's lawless frontier - is now the epicenter of global terrorism. It is where young American and British jihadists go to be trained, where the kidnapped are stowed away, and where plots are hatched for deadly attacks all over the world. It has become, in President Obama's words, "the most dangerous place" - a hornet's nest of violent extremists, many of whom now target their own state in vicious suicide- bombing campaigns.

Imtiaz Gul, who knows the ins and outs of these groups and their leaders, tackles the toughest questions about the current situation: What can be done to bring the Pakistani Taliban under control? Who funds these militants and what are their links to Al Qaeda? Are they still supported by the ISI, Pakistan's all-powerful intelligence agency?

Based on dozens of exclusive interviews with high-ranking Pakistani intelligence, government and military officers and extensive first-hand reporting, The Most Dangerous Place is a gripping and definitive exposé of a region that Americans need urgently to understand.

Publishers Weekly

In this breathless play-by-play, Pakistani journalist Gul surveys the violent free-for-all along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. The kaleidoscope of armed religious and ethnic factions he follows includes Taliban groups that attack each other almost as readily as they do their enemies; Pakistani army and police forces, who fight pitched battles with the Taliban and also cut deals with them; tribal militias that sometimes support the Taliban and sometimes the government; competing Arab and Uzbek strains of al-Qaeda; and miscellaneous smugglers and bandits. Hovering above it all are CIA drones periodically lobbing Hellfire missiles into the fray. The author traces the turmoil to the Soviet and American invasions of Afghanistan, the Pakistani government’s erstwhile support for Afghan jihadists, and Pakistan’s authoritarian rule, but the fundamental problem is the absence of a functioning state, aside from the Taliban chieftains who try to stamp out crime, girls’ schools, barber shops, and iodized salt. Gul’s disorganized but readable account doesn’t alter the conventional picture of the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier, but he offers a useful scorecard for the struggle to bring order to the region--and shows how difficult and perhaps even unrealizable it is. (June)