Iraq disintegration may hit Pak hard: Study

The disintegration of Iraq would destabilise the West Asia and ultimately affect Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to a French think tank.

The disintegration of Iraq would destabilise West Asia and ultimately affect Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to a senior researcher working for a French think-tank.

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"Destabilisation in the Middle East will spread to Pakistan," a researcher at the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris told a group of Pakistani journalists who visited France last week.

"Pakistan may be affected if Iraq's disintegration takes place, and its aftershocks will be felt in Balochistan and NWFP," Daily Times quoted the researcher as saying.

He said continued sectarian and anti-US violence in Iraq threatened the country's future as a unified state, and its sectarian divide was making headlines in the western media.

He also said Iraq's division would hit Turkey very hard, where Kurdish separatists are already fighting Ankara for an independent Kurdistan state that Iraqi Kurds would also like to join.

"If we talk of an independent Kurdistan, why not give the same right to the Baloch and Pushtoons?" he asked.

Iraq's disintegration would also threaten Saudi Arabia, he said without elaborating.

"The problem in Iraq is that the society is breaking up ... The problem is not that the country is breaking up."