It’s been an open question for several years which would come to pass first: nuclear Pakistan going Islamist, or Islamist Iran going nuclear.

To judge from this Wall Street Journal report, Pakistan has taken a slight lead in these stakes.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the Taliban advances pose “an existential threat” to Pakistan and urged Pakistanis world-wide to oppose a government policy yielding to them.
Pakistanis “need to speak out forcefully against a policy that is ceding more and more territory to the insurgents,” Mrs. Clinton said in testimony before a House committee. She pointed to “the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan by the continuing [Taliban] advances, now within hours of Islamabad.”

I can’t see that Pakistanis speaking out forcefully is going to make much difference at this point. Unless you think the U.S. public has the appetite for a major military intervention in Pakistan (no, me neither), I’d say the place is going belly up, or at best is headed for a partition. I hope India has some contingency plans for the forthcoming floods of refugees — tens of millions, very likely.