Taal Matol
Pay up or leave!
By Shoaib Hashmi
The Defence Housing Authority is Lahore's pride and joy; the latest in a series of housing colonies catering to the elite, it occupies around a quarter of the city's total area West of the canal. During British times this was mostly virgin land where the Brits built their Cantonments as the city outgrew the old Walled City to the West, and so the land became Army land. Around ten years back the army slowly started giving the land over to civilian housing under a new authority called DHA. It has become the posh-est residential area in town.

operation
Neither defeated nor destroyed
The unprecedented breakdown of the law and order in NWFP has left the people with little hope that the government is capable of coping with the enormous problems
By Rahimullah Yusufzai
The situation in NWFP has never been so alarming. The breakdown of the law and order is unprecedented and the people have little hope that the government, whether federal or provincial, is capable of coping with the enormous problems facing the province.

RIPPLE EFFECT
Masters of spin -- and some questions
By Omar R. Quraishi
Much like several television anchors and commentators (especially the ones who are nothing but the Taliban in disguise) the actual Taliban too are master of spin. Take for instance, Muslim Khan's recent interview where he said that the Pakistan Army and the government were agents of America -- in essence calling them working for infidels hence apostates hence 'wajibul qatal'. The implication was obvious and meant to reinforce the perception that the war against the Taliban is purely being fought at America's behest and is indeed being bankrolled by the Americans. Muslim Khan also said -- and there really cannot be a lie bigger than this -- that the government and the military violated the Swat 'accord' because it launched a military operation in Buner and Dir.

A spectre is haunting Pakistan, it is said -- the spectre of Talibanisation. In a manner of mere weeks, it seeks to envelop us in its grisly fold, removing the last vestiges of civility and enlightenment from this nation's mantle, shrouding it forever under the dark cloak of medieval barbarism in the name of Islam. The international community is up in arms, the local media is finally raising the alarm, the liberal elite have suddenly decided to 'save' the country and the right-wing is crying foul (read: American conspiracy). And yes, the military operation is underway.

It appears as if the country has awoken from a slumber to find this apparently unrecognisable monster in the living room, with a typically reactive response. Overnight, it seems, the same activists who were decrying our erstwhile dictator for bombing our own people, are calling for the Taliban to be taken out by any means necessary. Concerns about the likely collateral damage, the entirely unavoidable mass exodus of the native citizenry and the similarly unavoidable militant backlash have been swept under the carpet. The situation is too dire, it is said -- practical exigencies have taken precedence over ideological commitments to democratic ideals.

Undoubtedly, the march of the Taliban is cause for great concern. The validity of their ideology and praxis need no longer be deliberated upon -- theirs is an exclusivist ideology of reaction built upon a xenophobic militarism that cannot be condemned enough. The army's links with these elements, official or unofficial, are also beyond reproach; any organ of state that continues to regard these terrorists as strategic assets is an aggressor towards the people of the country.

The problem arises when the leap is made, from condemnation of the aforementioned, to a unilateral military operation, in the hope that it will 'solve' the problem.

Yes, the army is obligated to protect its citizens from this menace and it should rightly do so. Anyone, however, who believes that a military response (one beyond our ability to direct or control in any way) will stem this phenomenon that we so dread, is deluding himself. We must bring ourselves to realise that the social, political and economic contradictions that breed these insurgents will not disappear through the exercise of the coercive apparatus of the state.

The security dilemma that we now find ourselves in is the tip of the much larger iceberg of existential crises facing the Pakistani nation-state today. The failure of the state to serve as an effective guarantor of society's well-being is manifest in every aspect of the country's problems. The Talibanisation phenomenon is a case in point: the madrassas that churn militants out by the thousands thrive by providing services (education, housing, food) that the state long abdicated responsibility for; the demand for Qazi courts in Swat is reflective of the failure of the state to provide an effective judicial mechanism in the region, something the TNSM has mercurially capitalised upon; the list could go on.

It is unreasonable, one has to say with considerable unease, to ask the nationalists of Balochistan, the peasantry of Okara or the armies of embittered wage-labourers in the country to unite behind the banner of a state which has failed them consistently and near-fatally for decades. Whether we wish to admit it or not, the impoverished masses that dot the countryside and the urban slums by the millions are not infected by our alarmism regarding the Taliban. Theirs is a destitution that has not been altered by the growing militant tide. It is in fact the very destitution the obscurantists feed upon. Capturing the popular imagination of these hapless millions and weaning them from the influence of the militants will require more than chillingly familiar clarion calls for a war on terror.

The realisation needs to set in, for all of us, that the contract between state and society in Pakistan requires a desperate paradigm shift in order for this battle, which is just beginning, to be won. Anyone interested in defeating the Taliban and their ilk needs to work towards constructing an alternative narrative to both the Taliban and the existing state structures. A narrative that is inclusive in its structural attendance to the legitimate material concerns of the country's destitute millions, that seeks to do away with the grisly remains of the jihadist-nationalist project of the Zia era, that seeks to establish independence in economic and foreign policy, that addresses long-standing provincial imbalances and demonstrates an unflinching commitment to sustained democracy and civil and political liberties.

This narrative cannot be constructed by merely standing on the sidelines and invoking the state to send in its foot soldiers. It will require the active engagement and participation of the educated elite in politics, something it has long been reluctant to even consider. It will require for the elite to step out of its comfort zone and politically and socially engage the subordinate classes it has long erected barriers against. It will entail providing a political voice to those whose complaints do not reach the daily news headlines. The necessity of this exercise can be weighed from historical experience; no successful social movement in modern history has succeeded without the active political involvement of the educated intelligentsia.

To be sure, it will require enormous political and economic sacrifices on our parts. But it can be accomplished; even if it does require more effort than most of us have been willing to expend. The recent visit of some active scions of civil society to the massive all-Punjab Peasant convention in Okara is of some relevance here. The breadth of the peasantry's appreciation of their presence and support was indicative of something much greater -- that it is only the cultivation of such organic links, in transcendence of social class, ethnicity, sect or regionalism, which can begin to smooth out our society's multiple contradictions.

How many of us in Karachi, Islamabad or Lahore would be willing to lead a delegation to the heart of Balochistan to call for the delivery of justice to its estranged inhabitants, while standing alongside them in cognisance of our earlier criminal indifference? The answer may not be encouraging right now; but there is reason to be hopeful, given the mobilisation of formerly apathetic sections of society over the past two years, in the wake of the Lawyers' Movement.

However long such an approach may take to culminate, it may be the only one that can check the impending chaos and disintegration that the country now faces in the long battle ahead. The question is, are we, the educated elite, willing to consciously grapple with grim socio-political realities or will we simply take flight and seek harbour in other lands once we see the Taliban in our own urban comfort zones?

"Shouldn't Arundhati Roy come from Pakistan?" sarcastically asked a Delhi freelance journalist, commenting on the Facebook posting about a panel discussion, 'Does Media Jingoism Fan India-Pakistan Tensions?' The cynical remark stemmed from his annoyance, shared by many, at Roy's consistent exposure of India's 'warts'. The panel, organised by the recently formed Forum of Media Professionals (www.fmp.org.in ), included four journalists from India besides the celebrated writer and activist Arundhati Roy as well as four Pakistani journalists and The Hindu's Islamabad correspondent Nirupama Subramanian.

Delhi is far cleaner and greener since I was last there nearly five years go, thanks to laws (that are actually implemented) banning diesel and making CNG compulsory. On a more intangible level, another kind of pollution remains, reminiscent of a phenomenon we face in Pakistan: right-wing jingoism fuelled by emotional appeals to religion and nationalism.

The jibe about Arundhati Roy, disguised under an urbane sarcasm, is just one aspect of bigoted nationalism. Going by that logic, those in Pakistan who fight for justice -- a struggle that necessitates exposing wrongdoings or 'washing dirty linen in public' according to our critics-- should represent India. Another aspect of such thinking is evident in the comments back home when I show my documentary 'Mukhtiar Mai: The Struggle for Justice', in Pakistan: "Why don't you make such films about violence against women in India? Women there have these problems too."

I wonder at this competitiveness that makes us feel self-congratulatory when we can point out how much worse the other is in some way.

Thankfully, not everyone takes this myopic view. In Allahabad, at a crowded meeting of the Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD), there was none of this one-upmanship or finger pointing. The audience immediately saw the commonalities of the issues raised in the films I showed, on Pakistan's flawed and discriminatory Hudood Laws and Mukhtiar Mai. They understood that the phenomenon in Pakistan of Taliban 'punishing' women for alleged transgressions is not much different from those who rape, kill or lynch women and couples for the sake of 'honour' in India itself or indeed in traditional communities in Pakistan.

The difference is that most of these 'honour crimes' are committed by relatives of the women who 'transgress', as opposed to the Taliban who are taking it upon themselves to enact these punishments as part of the imposition of their own criminal justice system that flouts the writ of the state.

Another difference is that the family in Haryana who hanged their daughter and the man she eloped with (in their own home) will be charged, tried and probably punished. In Pakistan, the ostensibly Islamic Qisas and Diyat (retribution and blood money) laws imposed by a military dictator in the 1980s allow the murder victim's family members to 'forgive' the perpetrators who are often their own relatives.

As for the Taliban and their sympathisers, none have ever been charged for their criminal transgressions, ranging from blackening women's faces on billboards, to disrupting public events in that involve women (remember the Gujranwala marathon?), to blowing up schools, killing teachers and dragging women out of their homes and murdering them for alleged 'immorality'.

In the Allahabad meeting, the tone was set by senior advocate Ravi Kiran Jain in his introduction when he stressed on the need for a stable government in Pakistan, and the desire to remove misunderstandings. His words reminded me of Nirupama Subramanian's appeal at the panel discussion in Delhi urging Indians to "be sensitive to Pakistan as a country that has problems and show moderation in how we respond to these problems."

Many Indians already understand this, but we don't hear their voices in the media very often. For instance, Utpala, a women's rights activist, during the discussion in Allahabad talked about the need for Indians and Pakistanis to be allowed to visit each other's countries. Her own visit to Pakistan many years ago, she said had expanded her 'angan' (literally, courtyard). She ended by asking, "How can we in India be happy until there is a pro-people, pro-women government in Pakistan?"

The Delhi panel was disrupted for a minute or so by one man at the back of the auditorium who stood up and shouted anti-Pakistan, pro-war slogans. The organisers threw him out. He turned out to be from the Sri Ram Sene, one of the faces of India's right-wing 'Sangh Parivar'. Three or four others were outside, whom the organisers had refused to allow entry as they were not signing their names in the register. The SRS, which does not otherwise have much presence in Delhi, later claimed it had sent "thirty" men to disrupt the meeting.

True to form, illustrating the very issues we had been discussing, most media hyped up the disruption which then overshadowed the discussion itself. Pakistani journalists were "roughed up", "attacked", the meeting disrupted for "15-20 minutes" and so on. The incident set off a chain reaction across the border, giving right-wing forces in Pakistan the opportunity to condemn the "anti-Pakistan feelings in India". A 'human rights' organisation held a demonstration against the 'attack'. Jamat-e-Islami's recently elected chief Muanawar Hussian promptly issued a statement saying that it should serve as an eye-opener to those who talk of friendship with India and they should refrain from visiting India ('ba'az ajana chahiye').

For such people, obviously the anti-Pakistan slogans raised by one miscreant are paramount over the dozens of people in the IIC auditorium who listened respectfully to the discussion and engaged in a dialogue with the speakers later. The people in Allahabad and at the Delhi Press Club a few days later who came to hear a Pakistani journalist and express their support for a democratic order in Pakistan also don't count, even if some of them were prepared for a rough time, like Zafar Bakht in Allahabad who had lent his school's auditorium for the event. "After hearing of the Delhi incident, we rolled up our sleeves and were prepared," he said later.

In the end, the anti-Pakistan slogans raised by one miscreant hogged the media limelight rather than those who filled the auditorium, heard the speakers respectfully and engaged in dialogue later. This is the nature of the media beast. Who is going to tame it?

This is a slightly revised version of article published in HardNews

The Defence Housing Authority is Lahore's pride and joy; the latest in a series of housing colonies catering to the elite, it occupies around a quarter of the city's total area West of the canal. During British times this was mostly virgin land where the Brits built their Cantonments as the city outgrew the old Walled City to the West, and so the land became Army land. Around ten years back the army slowly started giving the land over to civilian housing under a new authority called DHA. It has become the posh-est residential area in town.

The other day some members of the Punjab Assembly just happened to be looking into the records and came upon the fact that the DHA had requisitioned all this land, in the interest of national security, as I say about half the total area of Lahore, and had not actually paid anyone for it. The upshot is that the Government of the Punjab has written to the Authority to say, "Pay up"! It comes to around six billion rupees, "or else take up your stuff and go somewhere else!"

I think the whole thing is priceless! The oldest parts of the DHA are mainstream Lahore where people have lived for ten years or more, with schools and markets and housing, and they also have planned extensions in seven new phases where they have been building roads for years. Part of this area is right next door to my school where they have already had trouble where one little village refused to hand over their land, built boundary walls and sat tight. The village is still sitting there while the DHA grows up round it.

That could turn to chicken-feed if the provincial government sticks to its guns and insists that either the DHA pay up or take its custom elsewhere. And that is not the end of the story. The Defence society in Lahore is only one of half a dozen in different towns all over Pakistan, and once precedence is set others could get the idea and societies all over could get to pay through their noses.

Meanwhile, the Americans are worried that the Taliban are just a hundred miles from Islamabad and, if they want, could easily take over and the Government of Pakistan couldn't resist them; and then they could lay their hands on our nuclear weapons. Who needs to import Taliban to do that. All we need do is tell one of our provincial governments, there is plenty of money to be made and they could do it all by themselves!

The situation in NWFP has never been so alarming. The breakdown of the law and order is unprecedented and the people have little hope that the government, whether federal or provincial, is capable of coping with the enormous problems facing the province.

The collapse of the Swat peace deal has caused huge displacement of people due to fear of yet another military operation in the valley against the Taliban militants. Any time now, the Pakistan Army may launch action which could be bigger and more decisive than the two previous military operations undertaken in Swat during the last couple of years. Already military action is taking place in Buner and Lower Dir districts. But the one in Swat would have to be a massive one considering the fact that the Maulana Fazlullah-led militants are well-entrenched in the district and could receive reinforcements from Taliban and jehadis in rest of NWFP, particularly the tribal areas, and beyond.

It is not that Swat, Buner and Lower Dir are the only trouble spots in the province. Taliban militants are also active in Upper Dir district, where security forces have been attacked, pro-government people were kidnapped and girls' schools blown-up. They have made their presence felt in Shangla district, more so in its Puran area adjoining Buner. There has also been Taliban activity in Malakand Agency, which too is part of the Malakand division and serves as the gateway to Swat, Dir and other districts. As in the past, military convoys passing through Malakand Agency have come under attack from militants seeking to disrupt movement of troops and cut their supply lines.

Chitral is the only district out of the seven in Malakand division where Taliban presence hasn't been reported, though it cannot be ruled out entirely. Worried about the likelihood of militants' entry into their peaceful district, the Chitrali political, social and religious elders recently requested the Tanzim Nifaz Shariat-i-Mohammadi (TNSM) leader Maulana Sufi Mohammad not to visit Chitral at this stage. Bordering Afghanistan's Kunar, Nuristan and Badakhshan provinces, Chitral has suffered from the fallout of the un-ending Afghan conflict and is still home to a large number of Afghan refugees. The Shariah-based Nizam-e-Adl Regulation, which was being enforced in its amended form in Malakand region and Kohistan district of Hazara division as a result of the deal between the ANP-PPP coalition government and Maulana Sufi Mohammad, is also meant for Chitral even though some Chitral residents have been arguing that they weren't taken into confidence when this decision was made. However, there has been no opposition to the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation as opposing a law that is somehow linked to Shariah is something unimaginable in conservative places like Chitral and Malakand.

The military has also been carrying out occasional air strikes against militants' hideouts in Orakzai Agency and Khyber Agency. Not only Taliban but also other militant groups are active in these two tribal areas, particularly in the remote Tirah valley. The Taliban are using the centrally-located Orakzai Agency as the hub of their activities in southern NWFP as it is one of their major supply lines.

Another trouble espot is Darra Adamkhel, where the military has been forced time and again to undertake punitive measures against the militants. However, it isn't a stable place as the Taliban are still able to sneak into the gun-manufacturing town and make their presence felt.

Bajaur Agency is being presented as a success story in terms of the long and sustained military operation that was carried out there. Big claims were made about the losses inflicted on the militants but none could be substantiated. There is no doubt that the Taliban militants suffered setback as a result of the military action but they weren't fully defeated. The undertaking given by the Mamond tribal jirga to the government was hailed as an important breakthrough because the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) deputy leader Maulana Faqir Mohammad and other local commanders were required under it to halt their activities and appear before the authorities. This hasn't happened. In fact, militants in Nawagai and elsewhere in Bajaur even carried out some attacks against government installations.

In Mohmand Agency, military action appears to have diminished the Taliban strength. As no peace deal was made there, the militants are still active in parts of Mohmand Agency and are being targeted by the security forces. The militants have also been attacking the soldiers and the policemen in places outside the Mohmand Agency.

Though South Waziristan and North Waziristan are presently quiet, this is largely due to the fact that no military action is being carried out there. The US drone attacks, however, are continuing. In retaliation, the militants are avenging these missile strikes by targeting the security forces in and outside Waziristan. They are also taking their revenge from certain Afghan refugees and Pakistani tribesmen who are arrested on charges of spying for the US military, interrogated on camera and then executed.

The most explosive situation at present is in Swat, where a big military operation against the militants is reportedly being launched in the coming days. Already the jet-fighters and gunship helicopters have been pressed into service to attack the militants but ground operations by the army would take time as fresh troops were being deployed and efforts were underway to cut off the Taliban supply and escape routes. Troops' deployment was also made in Shangla district at Bisham to protect the Karakoram Highway linking Pakistan with China.

It appears that the military action this time would be much bigger and sustained. It may continue until the militants are defeated. At least this would be the goal even if it isn't fully achieved. The military action could prolong and take weeks and even months if one were to keep in view the two past operations in Swat. In neighbouring Buner, the military had promised to clear the district of militants in a week's time. That hasn't happened as the military action in Buner started on April 28 and the troops on May 7 were still at some distance from the Taliban strongholds of Gokand, Pir Baba, Sultanwas, Jiwar and Karakar.

In Lower Dir also, the two-day military operation focusing on the Maidan area was termed as a success. But many days later, the long-range artillery and mortar shelling was continuing and forcing the villagers in Maidan area to abandon their homes and move out to a life of misery and uncertainty in makeshift camps or with relatives and friends. Thousands of families were uprooted from Lower Dir and more started leaving when Maulana Sufi Mohammad, who belongs to Lal Qila village in Maidan area, also shifted his family after his house was hit by a shell fired by the security forces. People in his area were holding back and staying on until he moved out because they were hoping that the government would not attack Sufi Mohammad's village and area.

A few days after Sufi Mohammad shifted his family from his native Maidan area, his house was again hit by shell fired by the army's artillery guns and this time his son, Maulana Kifayatullah, was killed. The incident took place on April 7 and it could further embitter the relations between Sufi Mohammad's TNSM and the government. He had already pulled out of the Swat peace process after accusing the government of failure to fulfill its promises regarding the establishment of Darul Qaza, or appellate court, and the qazi courts under the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation. In fact, the Swat peace deal collapsed once Sufi Mohammad pulled out of it. It triggered a mass exodus of people from Swat, particularly from the twin principal towns of Mingora and Saidu Sharif.

With hundreds of thousands of people moving out of Swat, Buner and Lower Dir, the NWFP is now confronted with a humanitarian crisis of unimaginable proportions. The government is ill-prepared to cope with the situation. International assistance isn't enough and its delivery would take time. The government is lucky that majority of the internally displaced people (IDPs) are putting up with relatives, acquaintances and even strangers instead of taking up residence in the hopelessly inadequate relief camps. This has lifted the burden from the government even though the host families in most cases cannot be expected to look after the needs of the IDPs for long. The military operation in Swat and elsewhere in Malakand division may or may not achieve its target but it has already displaced large number of people. The IDPs in most cases are angry with both the military and the militants because they blame both for their displacement and suffering.

Dr Tanveer Ahmed was in Pakistan from April 26th to May 2nd representing UNIFEM Australia to launch the White Ribbon Campaign in Pakistan. Dr Ahmed is a psychiatrist and writer who has worked with South Asian communities in Australia. Trained as a physician, journalist and a psychiatrist in training, he has worked with people who attempted suicides, survivors of domestic violence and maladjusted urban immigrant youth in Australia.

As a medical student at Sydney University, he was conscious of the relevance of the social and human sciences and studied anthropology and political science as part of his double degree. Then he stopped his education for a couple of years to work as journalist and started writing regular columns on politics and society for Australia's major newspapers. After working for about two years as a journalist, he returned to his medical studies and completed his training. His idea of combining medical knowledge, journalism, electronic media, and psychiatry seems to be a great insight for analysing the psychological problems of Muslim immigrants in Australia. That is what this writer felt when he started explaining the communal life of Australian Muslims by using psychological terms at a collective level.

Like every civilisation, Muslims in Australia imagine a Golden Past and feel threatened by the dominance of a non-Islamic system in the public sphere. This produces a sense of neurotic anxiety, Dr Ahmed argues, about the control over the domestic sphere which can often lead to violence against women. His analysis is similar to that of Barbara Metcalf, the translator of Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanawi's book Bhishti Zevar. When the Muslim male feels powerless about his influence in the external world, he can show his anxiety in a neurotic way in the home. These, and many other insights, sound more authoritative when coming from a media-savvy doctor and psychiatrist who has chosen to diagnose the travails his own community in Australia.

He himself has lived through all the problems and distinctions of immigration. After his parents migrated from rural Bangladesh to Sydney, he started attending a public school and then he was awarded a scholarship to study at Sydney Grammar School, one of the most prestigious schools in Australia which functions as the preparatory institution for the sandstone universities of Australia. He was the only Bangladeshi kid in his class and that made him aware of the problems of his community. The Bengali immigrant parents were not preparing the next generation for the knowledge and service industries of the future. He felt they were too busy with the struggle to survive to help their kids attain any privileged intellectual position. Perhaps, that is why, later in his life, he became the most famous media intellectual of his community. He started writing about the psychological problems of minorities and gender hierarchies.

He worked with far-flung aboriginal communities, analysed their drug addictions fuelled by a sense of having been relegated to the wrong side of history. He dealt with emergency room resuscitations of attempted suicides of Muslim women who had been forced into marriages without any regard for their own choices. He witnessed the level of desperation among medical trainees in the Australian medical education system. And he started voicing all these concerns in various newspapers and TV channels of Australia. The government of Australia recognised him as one of the 100 most-influential public figures of the future.

His future plans are to help Islam reconcile with Western modernity without any narcissistic fears and help Muslims deal with the consequences of the encounter with the West. He feels he can apply his knowledge of medicine, psychiatry, and anthropology on Islam as a civilisation. That is why he is planning on writing a book on Muslim immigrants in Australia, especially on their problems of integration in a Western society. He thinks Islam, as a civilisation, will have to ultimately address its narcissistic and imagined opposition with the West.

He becomes passionate when asked about masculine domination in Muslim societies. He starts giving me a long list of syndromes which can be applied to men who are insecure and become violent to assert their dominance in the domestic sphere. Soon he changes the topic to other problems in Australia. Then I ask him about multiculturalism in Australia. He thinks the white people are a minority in Sydney. He gives the example of a high school game "Find the Aussie" in which students has to spot a white Australian kid in the class and it is such a difficult task when one is surrounded by Lebanese and Vietnamese students.

Amid all these concerns, South Asian Muslims remain the focus of his analytical acumen which, though sometimes mercurial, is going to serve the cause of multiculturalism for decades to come.

Much like several television anchors and commentators (especially the ones who are nothing but the Taliban in disguise) the actual Taliban too are master of spin. Take for instance, Muslim Khan's recent interview where he said that the Pakistan Army and the government were agents of America -- in essence calling them working for infidels hence apostates hence 'wajibul qatal'. The implication was obvious and meant to reinforce the perception that the war against the Taliban is purely being fought at America's behest and is indeed being bankrolled by the Americans. Muslim Khan also said -- and there really cannot be a lie bigger than this -- that the government and the military violated the Swat 'accord' because it launched a military operation in Buner and Dir.

Surely, the Taliban cannot claim to be pure and holy warriors, fighting for Islam, when they go around abducting and kidnapping and then beheading civilians; threatening families that they want to marry their daughters and then entering into forced marriages, and in fact regularising this by setting up a so-called 'marriage bureau' in Swat where members of the Taliban can register to get married; blowing up girls' schools; blowing up boys schools; blowing up all government buildings and infrastructure; blowing up electricity pylons; dynamiting bridges; looting private and public property; ransacking offices of NGOs and banks and other institutions and looting them of their equipment; looting offices of relief and aid organisations and stealing their food supplies and office equipment; bombing barber shops; bombing shops that sell items such as CDs and DVDs (instead they have no problem selling CDs which have their own propaganda and show Taliban 'warriors' beheading 'kafir' FC personnel and the like); enter into so-called peace deal which they have no intention of abiding by; enter into talks with the government or tribes and then take them hostage when they come for the negotiations; prohibit women from having jobs; prohibit women from going to schools; prohibit women from walking out of their homes; prohibit women from seeking medical treatment from a male doctor; prohibiting women from walking out of their homes alone unless accompanied by a mehram male (and there is no guarantee that this may still endanger the woman's life) – and the list goes on and on.

Also, it was none other than the Swat Taliban's spokesman who had said, following the agreement in Swat, that the Taliban would never lay down their arms because they were fighting to implement Sharia and that even if Sharia had been implemented in Swat (and the accompanying proviso to this, in the said deal, was that the Taliban would then lay down their arms).

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And to quote from Adil Najam's excellent post on his blog www.pakistaniat.com where he talks of a video which shows that quite to the contrary, anti-Taliban sentiment is found among most ordinary people as well. He writes (on http://pakistaniat.com/2009/05/03/taliban-pakistan-talibanization/) that the point of the video is "not that all Pakistanis are opposed to Talibanisation. It is that not all Pakistanis are for them. The distinction between the two is subtle, but vital. The video puts to a lie the notion that anti-Taliban sentiments are to be found only in the so-called liberal and elite classes. Indeed, the empirical fact is that the people who the Taliban and other religious extremist forces have been killing in Pakistan are (a) nearly all Pakistanis, (b) nearly all Muslims, and (c) none of them are either very liberal or very elite.

It should not be a surprise, then, that at least some, probably many, and possibly most, 'non-liberal,' 'non-elite,' Pakistani Muslims would be against the Taliban and the war they are waging on Pakistan, Pakistanis and on Pakistani Muslims. The tragedy is that too many Pakistanis remain unsure about the Talibanisation threat and even more who are afraid of or reluctant to raise their voices against them. There is clearly a need to counter the propaganda of those who would have us believe that only a few 'liberal elite' oppose the Taliban. But equally important, even more important, is the need to acknowledge and somehow deal with the deep fissures and divisions within Pakistani society…Deeply divided on many of the most existential questions about the country's past, present and future: Including on questions of what the Taliban represent and how they should be dealt with. It is this division that the Taliban are exploiting. Until these societal fissures are somehow addressed neither military action, nor political strategy, nor international intervention will make any difference whatsoever."

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And the questions that I had in mind are: 1. Who is funding the Taliban? 2. Where do they get their weapons and communications equipment from? 3. Why cannot the Pakistani military break their supply of weapons and logistics? 4. Why cannot the ISI and/or military intelligence pinpoint the location of the Taliban leadership (especially given their penchant for speaking to the media quite liberally) and pass these coordinates on to the gunship helicopters or the SSG crack commandos? 5. Why is artillery being used a weapon of preference rather than deploying the military in large numbers to take on the militants and eliminate them -- rather than shelling which only forces them to leave a certain area, and retake it as soon as the military leaves. 6. What is being done about the flood of refugees that is on its way out of Swat and Malakand and heading to NWFP's cities? Not everyone has a relative or money to rent a house -- what will happen to those who have neither? Who will look after them? How will they escape the daggers of the Taliban on one hand and the shelling on the other?

The writer is Editorial Pages Editor of The News. Email: omarq@cyber.net.pk