To compound matters, the Taliban are a very different force from what they used to be. They have metamorphosed. Their modus operandi are now very different from what they were: as has been correctly noted, today, Pakistan is second only to Iraq in suicide attacks. Similarly, the Taliban used to hit and run. Now they engage in extended, fixed battles. More important, the aim of the Taliban now is not that of a local militant group. Nor, as Sushant Sareen writes, is their aim to undo Pakistan. Their aim is to take over Pakistan and Afghanistan, at least large parts of these. And from these areas as a base, to carry forward the jihad to convert lands farther and farther away that are today the dar ul harb into the dar ul Islam. Hence, there can be no doubt at all that, after consolidating their position in the trans-Indus regions, they will extend their ideology and operations into Punjab and Sindh. And recent attacks and explosions show that they already have the capacity to reach into the very heart of Pakistan. Incidentally, this has been a major strategic mistake of the West, one of many that is, to have shut its eyes to the fact that the Taliban was getting revived and transformed, and, instead, to have allowed itself to be diverted by the few ‘Al Qaida’ operatives that Pakistan has from time to time handed over.

There is an even more ominous transformation for Pakistan: the Islamic zeal of Taliban has got fused into Pashtun nationalism. Few of us realise that while there are 12 million Pashtuns in Afghanistan, there are 25 million in Pakistan. Historically, leadership has rested with the Afghan Pashtuns. But this is shifting to Pak-Pashtuns now — contrast the sway of warlords in FATA and NWFP with the shrunken, tenuous existence of Karzai: they roam freely, they dominate their areas while Karzai is confined to Kabul, and, even within Kabul, he is dependent on the Americans for even his personal safety. The Pashtuns have never accepted the Durand Line as a divide. Successive jihads — first against the Soviets and now against the Americans — have erased it on the ground. Even de jure, no Afghan government, not even the Taliban government that was the creature of Pakistani agencies, accepted it. In any case, the hundred years for which it was delineated are long gone. The Afghans have long demanded that the line should be further south, as far south in fact as Attock.

... contd.