It is a strange feeling. There is a war going on not too far from here, yet life goes on at a fairly normal pace. Offices are open, restaurants busy, and cricket is still being played. The slogan chanting crowds and the occasional relapse into violence are more visible on TV than in the everyday life here in Lahore. We are sometimes told that the Mall is closed today for a demonstration, but this is not unusual in a country where coming on to the streets is the preferred mode of political expression. Is all this real or just another way of shoving our head into the sand? Should we be more concerned, more apprehensive, more afraid?

We should be if we hear the one and only General(retired) Hamid Gul. Speaking to the Lahore High Court Bar association, he says that the next target is Pakistan. Particularly our nuclear program which the Americans will bomb to smithereens after they are through with Afghanistan. Terrifying words but we stopped taking the great General seriously years ago. We are more terrified in hindsight, ex post facto if you will, that we had people of his worldview in critical positions for so long.

This is not meant as a disrespect to the person of the General. He is a very kind and charming gentleman and exceedingly articulate. I have had the pleasure of knowing him for many, many years, ever since he was an up and coming Brigadier. We always got along well primarily because he is a considerate man who does not take to heart differences of opinion. And there have been many. What has always troubled me is not so much his radical, us versus the world, take on every issue. He has a right to his opinions even if they differ from mine. What worries me is a lack of pragmatism, of realism, of what can be done and what cannot be done, that permeates his thought processes.

This reminds me of speech that I heard in the Senate from the late Maulana Abdul Sattar Niazi. Talking of Kashmir and India, he seriously suggested that we should nuke them. His exact words were, 'why have we manufactured these bombs if we are not going to use them'. He of course also said that why are we nourishing this army, 'fauj kion pal rakhi hay', if we are not going to attack India. There is a kind of twisted logic in this but it has no relationship to reality, as most people see it.

It is the same kind of logic which has now pitted the Taliban against the rest of the world. They believe that their cause is just, their stand moral. They frame their actions in the context of religious injunctions and are keen to invoke the medieval discourse of a war between Islam and the infidels. Some of us do not agree with any of this as most of their enemies in Afghanistan and in the immediate neighbourhood are also Muslim. But, we should have little doubt, that these are the terms and images that galvanise them. This is what spurs them into action in war and in peace, incites them to beat up women whose ankles are not fully covered. They are invoking an ethereal logic to justify everything they do.

There is something missing in all this though. People like me would argue that even morality is missing because what kind of values would justify whipping defenceless women. Or, shaving the heads of men who play football in shorts. But, something else is also missing which is infinitely more dangerous. There is a disconnect with reality in their mind that is awesome. They totally lack any understanding of the world in which we live today. It is because of this that they are paying such a heavy price. It is because of this that they are being bombed into oblivion.

It is the reality factor that worries me about radical views of any kind. Whether these are the white supremacists in the United States who imagine black helicopters of the UN stalking their land. Or, the hard line Stalinists who killed millions to enforce their version of Marxist ideology, there is a disconnect with reality that is stunning. It is a victory of emotion over reason, a victory of the heart over mind.

The Taliban would hate to be told that they share a common heritage of logic with white supremacists and Stalinists and many others of a similar ilk. Like every other fanatic, they would like to imagine that there is something special about their cause, something noble about their belief. They will never accept anything else but some of those who sympathise with their cause should remember. There is little that distinguishes one set of lunatics from another.

This is not to say that there are no moral positions or that moral struggles should not be waged just because the opposition is overwhelming. All I am saying is that even a moral struggle must have reason and logic and an appreciation of ground reality guiding it. Charging the wind mills like Sancho Panza will only get you killed. And, this will not take even a moral struggle very far.

The Palestinians have waged a moral struggle for fifty years against overwhelming odds. They have used all kinds of tactics. They have fought when it has been necessary and negotiated when it furthered their cause. They have of course suffered untold hardship but they have not given up. They have been made homeless, their women and children have been brutalised and the flower of their youth has been killed mercilessly, yet they refuse to give up. What distinguishes their movement from crazies around the world is their hardnosed appreciation of reality. They have modulated their actions according to the circumstances. Through the chaos and suffering of their past at least a part of their objective, the Palestinian State, is close at hand.

A moral struggle harnessed to reality is the only recipe for success. The Taliban fail on both these counts. Their struggle is neither moral nor do they have their feet on the ground. Their morality and their reality are both twisted beyond repair. That is why they are not likely to last for very long. If equilibrium is the natural order of things, the Taliban are an aberration. This anomaly is about ready to disappear. Few tears are likely to be shed for them.