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 do think this is Taliban expansion. They are expanding into other parts of Pakistan. These are not the same Taliban that are fighting in the North, these are local Talibans and this just shows how deep they have gotten into society. This is really scary.
Actually, the Taliban are fighting a war against Islam. They are killing Muslims, they are targeting Muslim scholars like in Lahore today. They are destroying mosques. This is all well planned. They want to impose their demon ideas on all of us and replace the Islam we practice by their barbarism.
It’s hard to say, but given the seemingly succesful military offensive in Swat, it seems like an act of desperation. Yet, the fact that they can attack any target in this country shows just how strong they are. But, for this comment, I’d like to point out something related.
While the Waziristan & Swat Taliban are often portrayed as the “enemy”, we are forgetting that the Taliban have a presence in all parts of Pakistan. None of the attacks in Lahore could have occurred without the assistance of terrorist elements in South Punjab. Similarly, the Afghan Taliban high command is said to be based in Quetta. While our national security establishment may make an artificial distinction between the Afghan Taliban and their Pakistani counterparts, the facts seem to suggest that both organizations owe their allegiance to Mullah Omar. Further, we should remember that much of the original Taliban were trained in seminaries (Jamia Binoria) in Karachi.
The point is this: in the end, the Swat offensive or even a planned Waziristan battle will not achieve a permanent peace. As long as Maddresah reform does not occur, elements in our national security establishment continue protecting the Afghan Taliban and see them as “patriots”, and finally, politicians such as Imran Khan or in the Jamaat-e-Islami see the Taliban as our “misguided” brethren, the Taliban will never be defeated, and peace will not return to Pakistan.
Thus, more problematic than the suicide bombings and terrorist attacks is the presence of an extremist mindset among many Pakistanis. Read comments on any right wing Pakistani blog (pkpolitics, for instance) to see what I mean. Many readers and commentators of that blog refused to believe that the Taliban pose a mortal threat to this country. That, my friends, is the real threat to Pakistan.
We see these events everyday and we keep getting angry over them but we don
I think this is more desperation than expansion by the Taliban. But they are actually losing even more ground by doing this because they are losing the most important support they had till now, i.e., the silence of the Pakistani public. Now people are outraged at their killings and bombs of ordinary Muslims all over Pakistan.