Editorial: A broader front against Taliban

President Asif Ali Zardari said Sunday that the Pakistan Army would be going into other tribal areas of the country in the hunt for the Taliban. He explained that the army had 150,000 troops there and it was already costing a billion dollars; an expansion would depend on how much the world would want to help. The collateral fallout will include more refugees, but then their quick return would depend very much on the success of the army operations. And for all this the world would have to help financially because Pakistan was in the eye of a global Taliban threat.

For the first time, Pakistan seems to be truly grasped of the situation. The operation in Swat is going well, judging from the very favourable casualty count of the enemy. But all analysts agree that the dwindling Taliban force will in time be reinforced from other parts of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that abut on Malakand Division. Also, for the first time there is almost a complete national consensus behind the plan to start wider operations. In fact, for the first time, the religious-clerical community has voiced its opposition to the Taliban brand of Islam, or at least the majority school of thought has dared to speak against a force that has hounded them over the years into submission.

There are, however, political problems within this consensus that will have to be faced squarely. The political parties have overt and covert agendas which they insist on expressing through various levels of “objection” to the military operation. From the extreme view, that our army is merely fighting America’s war and killing its own people, to the less extreme view that some parties were not consulted to avoid “talking” to the Taliban, the disagreement is very much there and can become more strident in the face of the attrition of fighting an insurgency involving foreign infiltrators.

The way the people at large have reacted to the savagery of the Taliban against the people of Swat is sure to make the resolve to fight the terrorists more firm. The resolve to take on the Taliban in FATA clearly demonstrates this new confidence. The Taliban must be stopped from coming to the help of warlord Fazlullah, and that can be done only by engaging the other warlord Baitullah Mehsud. Swat can be “conquered” and the refugees could start returning, only to find that Baitullah has sent in his people from South Waziristan to start the massacre all over again.

The triangle of discord in Karachi over the presence or non-presence of the Taliban in the mega-city unfolds with three coalition partners in the government steadily losing their men to “unknown” killers. After muhajirs and Pashtuns, now the PPP leaders at the local level are getting killed. Sadly, the three parties suspect one another of having carried out the killings. The MQM is seen as being alarmist about the swelling of the Taliban ranks in Karachi but, despite reports supporting this point of view, the other two insist that the Pashtun of Karachi are not terrorists. The police, however, go on reporting the arrest of Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders and their rank and file who confess that their men come to Karachi to get medical treatment and to take rest.

International opinion has turned in favour of Pakistan since the military operation began in Malakand Division. This is understandable because the policy of “talking” to the Taliban and making “peace deals” with them was seen, correctly, by world leaders as a policy of dereliction. When Islamabad and Rawalpindi decided finally to grasp the nettle of Taliban treachery, this opinion softened and is now inclined to help Pakistan financially as its army mobilises.

Therefore, for now at least, Pakistan is well set to face up to the menace of the Taliban without taking an economic nosedive. It now depends on our internecine politicians to keep the national consensus against terrorism intact and bite the bullet of some collateral damage in the coming days.

(Daily Times)