Adil Najam
Taliban murderers are at it again. An increased rampage of suicide bombings and blasts in Peshawar, in Lahore, in Nowshera, in Hangu, and all over Pakistan. As the operation against them intensifies in the Swat region, they are bringing more terror to the rest of Pakistan. From their statements, they take responsibility for and seem quite proud about killing Pakistanis, murdering Muslims, targeting Mosques, spreading mayhem.
Does this signify an act of desperation on the part of the Taliban, or an act of expansion?
Yesterday it was a blast at a five-star hotel in Peshawar. Today it was the targetted murder of a major anti-Taliban religious leader in Lahore and the destruction of a mosque in Nowshera. But these are just two data points in a continuum of killing Pakistanis, destroying mosques, and massacaring Muslims who disagree with their doctrine of hate that has accelerated recently and is likely to increase even more.
There is little pioint in repeating the gory details of these bouts of murder by the Taliban. We know the details already. And what we know will change soon enough. And more bombs will be added.
It is clear that the Taliban know exactly what they are doing. They are spreading mayhem. They are breeding fear. They are terrorizing Pakistanis. They are doing all this for a reason. The real battle is for the hearts and minds of Pakistanis.
They made the religious argument and that seems to be working less and less for them today. Now they are threatening our daily existence in the attempt to break the will of the public.
The question is: Will they succeed? Will we give in to their terror? Will they be able to scare us - the people of Pakistan - into retreat? Will we bow to their venom and murder?
These are not easy choices for those who actually live where the bombs are blowing up, where limbs are flying, where children are dying. This was always a war on Pakistan that Pakistanis themselves would have to fight. the Taliban are making it ever more personal for ordinary Pakistanis, every day.
The Taliban are hoping we will make the wrong decision. That we will side with our personal safety rather than our national security. Will we?
I appreciate all view points. You are all highly intellectuals. Please ask one question to yourself. Majority of you live in western world, and hate their prosperity. None of us want to go back. Why? It is lack of social justice. We can solve all the problems of Pakistan, if we all stop hating each other political views and work towards giving SOCIAL JUSTICE for every pakistani, no matter who that is.
CAN WE MAKE THE COMMITTMENT TODAY. Instead of voting C+ for The corrupt Iftikhar Chaudry, we should take charge of Justice System in our hand, we the Pakistanis living abroad. Tell me are we willing to take initiative. If we do, we should approach OBAMA, and do it. Believe it the solution is only in Social Justice, not in politics or religion.
I hope that some one will understand my point.
Desperation!
It is rightly said here, “it’s a cancer”
These criminals are the outer face and most extreme form of MULLAism. The most important fact, which is always ignored, is… THIS IS THE OUTCOME OF 12 CENTURIES OF THE SO CALLED ISLAM, SHARIAH AND IGNORANCE.
This is a transition from ignorance to pure Quranic ideals. When the ignorance so deep rooted, covered by hundreds of layers of miss perceptions and triggered by greed, lie, hate and narrow-mindedness… it produces such criminals!
No one can stop this transition, in fact, these criminal acts accelerates the process!!!
I don’t think we’ll give in to the Taliban mentally. I have faith in the army to wipe them out eventually. However, we are submissive to terror in any form.
Karachi is a prime example. Major political parties have made their way up using terror. Many ordinary folk face injustices and cannot do a damn thing about them because of the fear of terror. Hell, our present government is no exception! Within a few months of them coming into power, the number of Toyota Hiluxes filled with armed men roaming around the city must have increased 10-fold!
The people in power in this country use just as much terror but without taking lives, or at least no where near as many! The “writ” of the government is being challenged hence the military operation; I guess we can only submit to terror to a certain extent - the bright side is that we will not accept the Taliban.
All these military gains will be amount to nothing if the state cannot consolidate them politically. Let’s not fool ourselves that the Taliban have no following. The reason they have a following is not religious, its economic. Ask the poor common exploited person who he prefers: the Taliban or the feudals.
So before we get too excited about beating the Taliban militarily, we need to decide what to do once they’ve been (temporarily) removed from the scene. If nothing changes in a real way, they will come back stronger and with a far more compelling case than they already have. They are not the cancer: they are the symptoms. The cancer is within us.
Desperation…
Every atrocity they’ve committed after Swat is an act of desperation on their part… they’ve lost the propaganda war, and it is heartening to see the state finally take the sort of action we have seen in the last month or so… what we are seeing are the death throes of this evil…
Despite the death and destruction, these should be heady times for us as a nation… after a very long time we are fighting a just war and we’ve seen the tide turn against these monsters…
Wouldn’t it be great if on June 21 we could celebrate a T20 world cup victory and the death of Baitullah Mehsud?
Wishes are horses!
@prakash
No, Sir, Talibanism is not like Sikh militancy or LTTE. The latter had both a localized and limited agenda which could be crushed with state power, whereas the Talibanism is a cancer which infects the entire Muslim world, especially the Paky one, with the intention to overpower the entire world. You can compare it to fascism or Naxalites of India who are motivated with an ideology, how perverse you may think it to be, whose mindset could not be crushed with power and so these aberrations continue in one form or another.
Talibani extremism being a natural product of Paky mindset, which has led to convert its very Constitution to a ‘takfiri fatwa’, can be crushed only if the Paky mindset is changed and this seems to be well-nigh impossible. The result is quite obvious. We Pakies seem to be on the road to national suicide.
I think its more of a desperation than expansion. The Taliban sanctuaries have either been liberated or under attack. The next target should be the suicide bomber nurseries called madrassahs that have sprung up all over Pakistan. The endgame is quite simple, keep killing more of them than they can produce. Eventually that will finish them. We have all seen that peace treaties don’t do a damn.
@ Adil Najam
“From their statements, they take responsibility for and seem quite proud about killing Pakistanis, murdering Muslims, targeting Mosques, spreading mayhem.”
Unfortunately, this reminds the days when EXACTLY THE SAME THING HAPPENED to other Pakistanis, Muslims, and their Mosques….after 2nd ammendment to 1973 constitution…
I wonder why people like you never wrote or spoke such statments…. are chickens coming home to roost???