Going by this, Swat is as wicked as a wicked problem can get. Not only that, given the pressures of getting to the end-state, a solution, even as how must one get there remains highly disputed, the planner is not cut any slack when he goes wrong!

Problem is, there is no definitive solution because there is no definitive formulation of the problem for a host of reasons. The liberals can say the state must act as the Leviathan. Sure. But can the state do so in relation to one problem when its capacity to act as the Leviathan is undermined because of the fragility of the social contract which is presumed to have brought it into being and which the liberal enclave never tires of pointing to otherwise?

The question is important because the same set of liberals talk about the necessity for the state to dialogue with the Baloch sub-nationalists because the Baloch non-acceptance of the social contract is owed to the state’s highhandedness and its unacceptability!

In a way they are right because a state can act ruthlessly only when its writ is accepted by the majority of the people. A violent expression of state writ, paradoxically, requires the stamp of legitimacy even more so. But if that legitimacy is absent in relation to one set of dissidents, it is equally absent in relation to all sets of dissidents. Neither liberals nor the state can cherry-pick targets for the exercise of internal sovereignty.

The prognosis therefore is not easy, given the wickedness of the problem. But it is a foregone conclusion that if the presidential order is not signed, the fighting at some point will restart.

... contd.