pakistan's problems and india

Much is being made these days of Pakistan's newly-found resolve in fighting the Taliban. Wherever he goes, President Zardari is being praised by the same Western leaders who used to believe that Pervez Musharraf was the only man who could save the region from extremism. Now Zardari has taken up this role, and whereas one can certainly see something positive in the way opposition to extremism has been mobilized in the society, doubts must remain about the efficiency of the military "operation" against the Taliban: There is a huge cost in terms of civilian victims, displaced or even killed; the "operation" is taking place without observers, with total impunity for the army to do what they want; and the army doesn't seem to have abandoned its tactics of pitting one tribal leader against the other.

These are old tactics, but is there a new vision and a new policy as far as extremist groups are concerned? For this, one would have to compare the actions against the "Pakistani Taliban" with what Pakistan is doing about other militant groups which haven't turned against Islamabad, but are apparently still seen by some in the establishment there as useful strategic assets internationally: The Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) aka Jama'at-ud-Dawa (JuD), which is blamed by India for the Mumbai attacks in November, and the Afghan Taliban, many of whose leaders are reported to have found refuge in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

So far, the situation is far from clear here. A case in point is that Hafiz Saeed, the head of the banned LeT/JuD, had to be released from house arrest because the government had failed to present a case against him. There are strong indications that not much will change unless something happens in the relationship between Pakistan and India. In a perceptive recent analysis for Reuters titled "Can Pakistan take on the Lashkar-e-Taiba?", Myra MacDonald calls it

the Catch 22 of India-Pakistan relations. Without peace, Pakistan may never fully turn against the LeT. And India will not offer peace talks until it does so.

Anyone who has seen the latest UK Channel 4 "Dispatches" documentary on the Mumbai attacks, containing the recordings of intercepted phone conversations between the attackers and their handlers in Pakistan (at least that's the claim in the video -- which seems to have disappeared from youtube due to copyright issues...) will certainly understand why India has difficulties in resuming the dialogue with Pakistan before action is taken against LeT.

But is this Indian position helpful and constructive? In a brilliant speech earlier this year on relations between India and Pakistan, Stephen P. Cohen, one of the leading American experts on the region, was very critical of New Delhi. Some excerpts:

Structurally, the India-Pakistan relationship is toxic. It is a classic case of what I call a “paired minority conflict.” In these situations both sides see themselves as vulnerable, threatened, encircled, and at risk. They have a “minority” or “small power” complex (...)
It is easy to see why Pakistanis have a classic small power complex: they are indeed smaller than India, increasingly less capable, their friends are fickle, and when from time to time Indian politicians and officials concede that Pakistan is a legitimate country, Pakistanis feel even more insecure. But why India? (...) India is groping now for a national identity that would allow it to approach Pakistan with confidence, but there is no consensus on how to mesh India’s identity with that of Pakistan’s. Indians do not know whether they want to play cricket and trade with Pakistan, or whether they want to destroy it. There is still no consensus on talking with Pakistan: sometimes the government and its spokesman claim that they do not want to deal with the generals, but when the generals are out of the limelight, they complain that the civilians are too weak to conclude a deal. The default option seems to be that Pakistan is now someone else’s problem--in this case the United States’. (...) There is also an absence of imaginative strategic thinking in India—most officials and politicians seem to follow the advice of P.V. Narasimha Rao, who said that inaction is always preferable, that time will fix most problems.

This is not about "blaming" India for Pakistan's problems. But I find Cohen's argument highly persuasive that "Rising India has a Pakistan Problem" (the title of his speech), and that it is mainly in India's own interest to overcome the deadlock. India is the stronger one in this pair, why shouldn't it be "confident" and "imaginative"?

anything goes

Pakistan is in huge turmoil again. The lawyers and ex-PM Nawaz Sharif are trying to launch street protests against President Zardari, but the government is beating and arresting demonstrators and shutting down cable TV channels in quite the same way the former military ruler used to do. Now it seems information minister Sherry Rehman has stepped down in protest at the curbs against the media, further weakening Zardari's position. In the meantime, almost everyone from the army to the US and Britain are getting involved and trying to broker a compromise. But is Zardari ready to accept former Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry? And to reinstate Nawaz Sharif's PML-N government in the Punjab? Nobody knows, although "The News" put it very nicely in an article detailing all the rumours about back-channel negotiations:

In Pakistan, anything can happen, to anyone, at any time. And that’s the tragedy, and the beauty of it all.

resolution against the taliban?

As Barack Obama turns his attention towards Afghanistan, it is looking more and more uncertain that he can count on any real support from Pakistan in fighting the Taliban. According to many reports, the Pakistani army has all but ceded control of the Swat valley (which is only about 160 kms from Islamabad) to the extremists. And whereas for the first time in months, there is something like a public outcry in Pakistan against Taliban practices such as the closing of all girls' schools, the actions by the government and the army are half-hearted at best. Dawn writes:

The National Assembly on Tuesday unanimously adopted a resolution condemning the ‘ban’ imposed by militants on girls’ education and destruction of schools in Swat. The resolution, moved by Information and Broadcasting Minister Sherry Rehman, called for rebuilding the schools and protecting schoolgoing children. Observers, however, noted that the resolution contained no plan to combat extremists, who have destroyed more than 200 schools so far.

It became clear soon after the Mumbai attacks in India that, once again, something went seriously wrong in Pakistan. Reports came out that the sole surviving terrorist was from Pakistan. The Pakistani daily Dawn's reporters visited the village of Faridkot in Punjab and managed to trace down the family. The paper wrote:

the man who said he was Amir Kasab confirmed to Dawn that the young man whose face had been beamed over the media was his son. For the next few minutes, the fifty-something man of medium build agonized over the reality that took time sinking in, amid sobs complaining about the raw deal the fate had given him and his family.“I was in denial for the first couple of days, saying to myself it could not have been my son,” he told Dawn in the courtyard of his house in Faridkot, a village of about 2,500 people just a few kilometres from Deepalpur on the way to Kasur. “Now I have accepted it.“This is the truth. I have seen the picture in the newspaper. This is my son Ajmal.”

And yet, the Pakistani government continued to obfuscate the matter. A "Washington Post" reporter visiting the village found that every movement was closely monitored by Pakistani intelligence agencies. Why, if they had nothing to hide? When a report by GEO TV confirmed the Dawn story, a politician filed a case against the TV channel for "anti-state activity". Only when it was really no longer possible, the government accepted that Ajmal Kasab was from Pakistan.

So what about the so-called Pakistani "crackdown" on Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, aka Jama'at-ud-Dawa - the extremist groups said to be behind the Mumbai attacks? Just an eyewash again, according to media reports. It is safe to assume that ever since 9/11, the vast majority of the so-called "clampdowns" on extremists in Pakistan were at best symbolic, and often enough those to be "attacked" were warned beforehand. In a recent detailed article about why the US remains worried about Pakistan's nuclear weapons, New York Times reporter David E. Sanger narrates the example how Pakistan's Prime Minister Gillani intended to impress his hosts with the news of an attack against an extremist madrassa when he visited the US last summer:

Though Gilani never knew it, Bush was aware of this gift in advance. The National Security Agency had picked up intercepts indicating that a Pakistani unit warned the leadership of the school about what was coming before carrying out its raid... When the “attack” on the madrassa came, the Pakistani forces grabbed a few guns and hauled away a few teenagers. Sure enough, a few days later Gilani showed up in the Oval Office and conveyed the wonderful news to Bush: the great crackdown on the madrassas had begun. The officials in the room — Bush; his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley; and others — did not want to confront Gilani with the evidence that the school had been warned... Indeed, Gilani may not even have been aware that his gift was a charade: Bush and Hadley may well have known more about the military’s actions than the prime minister himself.

Pakistan's military and political establishment is still playing silly games with the extremists instead of fighting them. Unfortunately, all indications from Swat, the tribal areas and other places are that these tactics have made the Taliban too strong already - and it won't be possible to get rid of them any time soon.

a rare voice of reason

The Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid is well known internationally as an expert on the Taliban, of course. But his latest book, "Descent into Chaos", is much more than a brilliant overview of the problems that the Taliban are posing to Afghanistan and Pakistan these days. It is unique as he is equally scathing in his criticism of the Bush and Karzai administrations, and at the same time very open about the shortcomings of Pakistan's policies towards Islamist militants.
Rashid is very clear that he supported the invasion to topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, but that almost everything went wrong after that: The US administration wasn't interested at all in nation building, also because it wanted to "move on" quickly to invade Iraq next. The weak Karzai government failed to curb the warlords' influence and drug trafficking.
Whereas these shortcomings have been openly discussed in the international media many times, Rashid's book is most interesting when he exposes the double-dealing of Pakistan's president Musharraf - who openly supported the war against the Taliban, but continued to help them behind the scenes. Intriguing for example Rashid's account of the evacuation of Pakistani officers (and Taliban as well as al-Qaeda leaders) from the beleaguered Afghan city of Kunduz in November 2001:

For Pakistan, the stalemate in Kunduz was turning into a disaster as hundreds of ISI officers and soldiers from the Frontier Corps aiding the Taliban were trapped there. They had been ordered to quit Afghanistan after 9/11 and had two months to escape, but instead they had stayed on to fight alongside the Taliban. Musharraf telephoned Bush and asked for a huge favor - a U.S. bombing pause and the opening of an air corridor so that Pakistani aircraft could ferry his officers out of Kunduz. Bush and Vice President Cheney agreed, but the operation was top secret, with most cabinet members kept in the dark.

This tells a lot about how naive the US were in dealing with Musharraf. He was encouraged, says Rashid, to grant the Taliban a safe haven in Waziristan and let the Afghan Taliban leadership operate out of the capital of Balochistan, Quetta.

To what extent the Pakistani secret services, in particular the ISI, have continued their support for the Taliban and other "jihadi" groups after 9/11, has been a much debated question. Rashid concludes, based on the information he received from retired Pakistani intelligence officials, that the ISI found it too dangerous to cooperate openly with the Taliban, but instead chose to "outsource" this support to a new, clandestine organization:

Former ISI trainers of the Taliban, retired Pashtun officers from the army and especially the Frontier Corps, were rehired on contract. They set up offices in private houses in Peshawar, Quetta, and other cities and maintained no links with the local ISI station chief or the army. Most of these agents held down regular jobs, working undercover as coordinators for Afghan refugees, bureaucrats, researchers at universities, teachers at colleges, and even aid workers. Others set up NGOs ostensibly to work with Afghan refugees.

The question is: How can this double-dealing be ended? Certainly not by increasing pressure from the outside, argues Rashid in a recent article (with Barnett Rubin in "Foreign Affairs")...

the concept of "pressuring" Pakistan is flawed. No state can be successfully pressured into acts it considers suicidal. The Pakistani security establishment believes that it faces both a U.S.-Indian-Afghan alliance and a separate Iranian-Russian alliance, each aimed at undermining Pakistani influence in Afghanistan and even dismembering the Pakistani state. Some (but not all) in the establishment see armed militants within Pakistan as a threat -- but they largely consider it one that is ultimately controllable, and in any case secondary to the threat posed by their nuclear-armed enemies.

The reactions to recent Indian accusations following the Mumbai attacks would seem to prove him right: Pressure from abroad only reinforces the feeling of isolation in Pakistan. The only practicable approach would be, therefore, a foreign policy that takes into account Pakistan's security concerns.

warlordism in pakistan

The situation in Pakistan's tribal areas has become quite confusing for most observers. As fighting, abductions and US air strikes are intensifying, it is becoming more and more difficult for independent journalists to visit the areas. How many militant groups are operating there? Which of them belong to the Taliban? How many foreign militants are active in the region? Is the Pakistani army making any headway with its operations? Outsiders won't be able to find reliable answers. 

But it seems clear the Pakistani tribal areas have been following a trend well known from Afghanistan: The traditional tribal structures have been weakened substantially, and as the state has failed to establish its control, the tribal areas are practically run by different warlords and their militias. An interesting example is that of Mangal Bagh in the Khyber Agency near Peshawar. Syed Manzar Abbas Zaidi from the University of Central Lancashire, UK, has just published "A Profile of Mangal Bagh" which makes interesting reading: From a humble social origin (he worked as a truck cleaner) he has risen to become the de facto ruler of the Khyber Agency. His militia "Lashkar-e-Islam" is popular for maintaining "law and order", i.e. his version of sharia. He follows a sectarian Islamist ideology although he had been an active member of the secular ANP in the past. And, perhaps most interesting, he has not joined the Taliban, but maintains a good relationship with the Pakistani authorities. As Zaidi puts it,

There is strong suspicion that Bagh is fighting a proxy battle for Pakistani intelligence.

This summer, the army was alarmed by violent incidents in Peshawar and launched an "operation" in the Khyber agency against Mangal Bagh. But, as Zaidi writes:

During the operation, security forces were actively engaged in blowing up bases vacated by Lashkar-e-Islam. This was more of eyewash than anything else, since brick structures can be rebuilt easily by such affluent groups. ... Militant movement was seen in the area, even as security forces stepped up their operations, giving rise to the surmise that the operation had been premeditated between the forces and Lashkar-e-Islam to save face for the establishment. ... The operation culminated in 13 days, with an agreement reached between Bagh and the government. The government, of course, declared the operation to be an unmitigated success.

Apparently, the Pakistani army and its intelligence agencies are using warlords such as Mangal Bagh, but at the same time, they have to show them (and the public) their limits when things get "out of hand". This (not very new) "strategy" raises a couple of questions: Will support for extremist militants not further de-legitimize state authority? Is it not bound to strengthen Taliban-type ideology, and eventually turn against the army itself? Why is there no attempt to fill the power vacuum otherwise? 

pakistanis, control and conspiracies

Conspiracy theories, a study recently presented in the magazine "Science" has found, are likely to be believed by people whenever they feel they are not in control. For outsiders following Pakistani media, it would seem Pakistanis definitely feel they have no control over their country. Conspiracy theories, wherever the war in the tribal areas is discussed. Most popular is the search for a "foreign hand" behind the militancy. It's quite common these days to hear a TV host, such as Javed Chaudhary on "Express TV", tell his viewers:

It's a fact that weapons and technology for the war in the tribal areas are coming from Russia. Russia is providing large amounts of ammunition and explosives which are brought to Mazar-e-Sharif via Iran. And from there into the Pakistani tribal areas. In Pakistan, commandos have been arrested who were no Muslims, who eat dogs' and cats' meat and drink alcohol.

Well, personally I find it difficult to imagine the tribal areas full of dog-eating foreign agents, but there are definitely more extreme characters on Pakistani TV. Take Zaid Hamid, for example, who runs a think tank and a series of programs on News1 channel, both called "Brass Tacks". He presents a totally closed and confused view of the world in which everything can be explained logically - and which is full of enemies of Pakistan - such as India, obviously, with whom a final showdown is inevitable, according to Zaid Hamid. Who, almost needless to say, has lots of fans...

In two recent articles in the Pakistani daily "The News", Fasi Zaka has criticized some of this hate speech which is freely published in the Pakistani media. About Zaid Hamid, he writes:

In this postmodern world where people have surrendered a good deal of their intimate freedoms to impersonal institutions, where the interlinked nexus of governments and corporations creates ripples that people find difficult to understand, the conspiracy theorist takes the easy way out by assuming that all events are at the hands of a secret few. Despite the invalidity of these theses, they have staying power because they offer no proof, and hence they cannot be disproved, especially if they are the product of a paranoid imagination. Common to most of these conspiracy theories is 'de-individualization', which is lumping people into impersonal groups and taking their humanity away from them. That's what Zaid Hamid does when he rants about the inferiority of Hindus, the inherent evil nature of Jews or Pakistani leaders he disagrees with. He neglects to realize that his method is what also drove the neoconservatives in creating a world in their own ethnocentric image and in the killing fields of Iraq.

All of this is not without its negative fallout. As Fasi Zaka rightly points out,

crucially, what people like Zaid Hamid do is hurt the process of self-reflection which is needed. Why look inwards for self-improvement if it is someone else's fault?

The only way out would seem to be transparency. As long as people feel no control at all, that not even their most basic questions are answered, many will be ready to believe anything...

zardari wants a hug

The bizarre meeting between US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari this week in New York had the world laughing. The Guardian has a hilarious commentary on it, full of malicious remarks like this one:

Zardari should be heralded as a medical phenomenon and toured across the globe. Who knew the cure for dementia, depression and PTSD was obtaining the post of president of Pakistan?

And, on a little more serious note,

with his flagrant display of sleaze-ball rhetoric, Zardari unwittingly symbolised the turbulent and twisted relationship between the US and its volatile, erstwhile lover Pakistan. One partner actively and shamelessly covets nearness, while the other selfishly exploits these lustful pangs for myopic policy initiatives.

Must read!

america's ill-advised new pakistan policy

In the US presidential election campaign, both Barack Obama and John McCain have indicated they would focus more on fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Particularly Barack Obama's criticism of the US war in Iraq which he said had only diverted attention from fighting Al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan, seems to have put President Bush under pressure to do more on the restive border region, in particular the tribal areas in Pakistan. These so-called FATA, maintains Christina Lamb in the Sunday Times of London, are

now almost entirely controlled by the Pakistani Taliban militias who in turn provide protection to the Afghan Taliban and to Al-Qaeda. The area is fast becoming the principal global launching pad for terrorists.

On the one hand, this has infuriated the US army fighting in Afghanistan, on the other hand Bush seems to be hoping for a "breakthrough" in fighting Al-Qaida, says Christina Lamb:

The growing frustration among US commanders in Afghanistan coincided with whatappears to be a new determination by George W Bush to find Bin Laden before hispresidency ends in January.“I know the hunt is on. They are pulling out all the stops,” said a US defence official. “They want to find Bin Laden before the president leaves office and ensure that Al-Qaeda will not attack the US during the upcoming elections.”

And so, Bush decided to act:

Whether it was because of the worsening security situation, or in the hope of springing “an October surprise” in the form of Bin Laden’s head to boost the election chances of the Republican John McCain, Bush decided it was time to go beyond reconnaissance and tracking. In late July he issued a secret national security presidential directive authorising special forces to carry out ground operations inside Pakistan without its permission.

But the American forces seem to lack the intelligence necessary for successful strikes within Pakistan. The Times article describes a case in early September when US commandos killed children in Pakistan. In fact, some seem to have foreseen that the new "strategy" would not work. As Gareth Porter writes for IPS,

State Department and some Pentagon officials had managed to delay the proposed military escalation in Pakistan for a year by arguing that it would be based on nearly nonexistent intelligence and would only increase support for the Islamic extremists in that country.

The critics could argue that

the previous experience with missile strikes against al Qaeda targets using predator drones and the facts on the ground provided plenty of ammunition to those who opposed the escalation. It showed that the proposed actions would have little or no impact on either the Taliban or al Qaeda in Pakistan, and would bring destabilising political blowback.

But "vested interests" made sure the new policy was implemented, Porter says. Ex-CIA officer Robert Baer, who should know these things, is also highly sceptical about "overhead surveillance" in the tribal areas. Writing for TIME, he argues that

the Bush Administration's decision to step up attacks in Pakistan is fatally reckless, because the cross-border operations' chances of capturing or killing al Qaeda's leadership are slim. American intelligence isn't good enough for precision raids like this. Pakistan's tribal regions are a black hole that even Pakistani operatives can't enter and come back alive.

On top of it, Baer says,

after the New York Times ran an article that U.S. forces were officially given the go-ahead to enter Pakistan without prior Pakistani permission, Pakistan had no choice but to react.

There were even reports that Pakistani soldiers shot earlier this week, forcing US troops to turn back into Afghanistan.

Is it really so difficult to understand? There will be no military victory over terrorism or the Taliban. Instead, it would be crucial to isolate them politically by forging a broad coalition of moderates and democrats. But with their ill-advised military attacks, the US are only going to alienate Pakistan's army, civilians and politicians. And mind you, Bush is only implementing what Barack Obama had demanded! In a recent interview with Democracy Now, Pakistani writer Tariq Ali warns:

I think this was a big mistake that Senator Obama made. He will regret it, because I don’t think he was briefed on what the situation in Afghanistan is. You know, historically, every time the US occupiers are cornered in a country, they try and blame the neighboring country—the same in Vietnam when they started
bombing Cambodia, saying it was Cambodia’s faults. The threats against Iran, even as we speak, and now the missions in Pakistan, the bombing raids in Pakistan, the killing of civilians in Pakistan, when the real crisis and the real problem is a war and an occupation inside Afghanistan which has gone badly wrong.

musharraf resigns - second thoughts from pakistan

What I find most interesting about Pakistani media reactions the day after is how openly Musharraf is criticized for his policy on Afghanistan and the Taliban. The Daily Times writes that Musharraf derived legitimacy for his rule from serving both the interests of the army and the Americans...

...until a clash of legitimacies (army versus NATO-ISAF) made it difficult for him to pass off his double-dealing as political ambivalence. This began to happen after his policy of giving shelter to the Taliban leadership of
Afghanistan in Quetta could not be maintained without adverse reaction from Washington, and his strategy of retaining domination of Afghanistan resulted in cross-border Taliban raids into Afghanistan.

And Yousuf Nazar demands in DAWN that Musharraf "face an open trial":

His greatest crime was that he compromised Pakistan’s national interests to consolidate his power when he was an international pariah and brought Pakistan to the brink of Balkanisation by his dual track policy of covertly supporting the Afghan Taliban while allowing the Americans to conduct air strikes on Pakistan.

He elaborates:

A section of our English-speaking elite believe Musharraf was trying to save them from the Taliban. This makes you wonder how ignorant one can be. He secured the evacuation of more than 3,000 Taliban and militants between Nov 15 and 23, 2001 from Kunduz in Afghanistan, where they had been trapped, to Pakistan’s tribal areas from where they were to later organise and conduct terrorist attacks.

Musharraf used the intelligence agencies to rig the 2002 elections to enable the supporters of religious militants and Lal Masjid extremists, such as Chaudhry Shujaat and Ijazul Haq, to gain power in the centre and the religious elements to gain ground in the NWFP and Balochistan. The politics of fear and blackmail was practised, fully exploiting the apprehensions of Pakistanis and the West of religious extremists.

Many people have criticized the ISI's involvement in the making of the alliance of religious parties, the MMA on many occasions, but Musharraf's links to the Taliban have generally not been exposed in this way in the Pakistani media, I believe. Could be helpful for an honest debate.

And finally, a bold claim by political scientist Rasul Bakhsh Rais, also in the Daily Times - wonder if he's right here, specially in the second half:

The real credit for causing Musharraf’s fall goes to civil society and the media, both new actors on Pakistan’s social and political scene. In all new democracies, where the transition from military to civilian rule has taken place, these two actors have proved catalysts of political change, and the agenda-setters and messengers of political forces.

musharraf resigns - first reactions by international media

Pervez Musharraf’s resignation announcement could have beaten Hitchcock at his best in terms of suspense. (Times of India)

"Until the last minute he was in two minds, facing a choice between fight and flight," a close aide, who had strongly advised him to cling to power, told AFP.

The speech was as much an attempt to secure his historical legacy as it was an effort to refute critics who said that he had undermined the country's stability by clinging to the presidency. (Wall Street Journal)

In the end, the Pakistani ruling coalition only needed to summon the courage — something they found in short supply for nearly five months — to go for the kill. (aljazeera.net)

Pervez Musharraf, who resigned on Monday, took Pakistan to the brink of war with India during the 1999 Kargil hostilities only to launch a sustained peace process a few years later. (expressindia.com)

Critics say he suffered from a "saviour complex" and believed he was indispensable. (Reuters)

If the president retained substantial powers, Zardari might want the position, although he has has hinted the next president may be a woman. Analysts speculate that the ethnic Pashtun leader Asfandyar Wali Khan is a frontrunner because he is liberal and it would be a sign of national unity. (Guardian)

If over the coming months the weak civilian partners fail to arrest the decline of the economy and the rise of militancy, they may face a galling nostalgia for the one-man rule of the Musharraf years. (Time)

pakistan and the taliban

After a few months of trying negotiations, the first major military operations against militants on the Afghan border under the new Pakistani government has begun. Although this particular "Lashkar" in Khyber agency does not seem to have links to the Taliban, the signal is clear. And it is quite possible that the latest suicide bombing against the police in Islamabad is related to this new development.

One would expect a furious debate in the country about this issue: How should one deal with the militants? Where does Pakistan stand?

Well, a debate there is, but it is taking place mostly in the Pakistani community abroad or on the fringes of the political spectre. A very instructive debate can be found on the website pkpolitics.com, which has become a major source of information for Pakistanis abroad.

A couple of days ago, pkpolitics published an article called "Views of a Pakhtoon" which defends the Taliban and drew lots of reactions, both positive and negative. Certainly nothing in between.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, one of the most outspoken liberal intellectuals, is one of the very few voices these days who openly calls on Pakistan to fight the militants with military force, if necessary. In the DAWN daily newspaper, he writes at the end of a brilliantly argued and certainly not pro-American editorial:

Pakistan must find the will to fight the Taliban. The state, at both the national and provincial level, must assert its responsibility to protect life and law rather than simply make deals.

DAWN columnist Irfan Husain, who lives in London, supports him:

From the very beginning, this creeping insurgency has been treated as an ideological and strategic issue, rather than the law and order problem it basically is. By negotiating endlessly with violent law-breakers, we have given them a legitimacy they did not deserve.

Why is it that not more people join them? The majority of Pakistanis at home probably don't want the Taliban in power (they certainly haven't voted for extremist parties in the last election), but they do not want military operations against them either. They don't want foreign troops in Afghanistan, and they want to get rid of a president who, most think, has "sold" them to the Americans. Let him go first, then everything is possible, even pacifying the militants. The most popular politicians such as Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan argue in this way, and most opinion leaders in the media, too... But even should Musharraf go one day - how is the problem of militancy simply going to disappear? Is it really enough to make Musharraf, the army and the Americans the scapegoat for everything?

By the way, this is just another outsider speaking...