April 21, 2007: One reason Pakistan has had a hard time dealing with the Taliban is because of a lack of Cyber War capability. Pakistan is still depending on the United States, usually the American FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) to tap into email and other traffic on the Internet. Islamic terrorists are enthusiastic users of the Internet, even though such use can be detected. But not by the Pakistanis. It's not for want of trying.

Back in 2003, as a result of American journalists Daniel Pearl getting kidnapped and murdered by local Islamic terrorists, Pakistan announced that it was establishing a Cyber Crime Wing at their the Federal Investigation Agency (the FIA is similar to the U.S. FBI). All well and good, except that the FIA was never staffed or equipped to do the job, and Pakistan continued to depend on the Americans when it needed help chasing down people on the Internet. The Americans were happy to help, when it involved people of mutual interest (Islamic terrorists). But the Pakistanis couldn't call in the FBI to help with purely domestic matters, nor did they want to get Americans involved in local politics.

Meanwhile, Internet based crime and terrorism activity became a growing problem in Pakistan, and the government realized that it needed a Cyber War capability that worked. Now the government has announced that it will spend several million dollars to equip and staff a proper operation to deal with Cyber Crime. None too soon, as more and more Pakistanis, now with access to the web, are being victimized by Internet criminals.

The American FBI has made the Pakistanis aware of what tools are available to do what in the cyber crime area. The FBI has trained hundreds of Pakistanis in cyber crime fighting techniques. Now all it takes is money, people (Pakistan has lots of computer and net savvy engineers) and will.