This is the tip of the iceberg as far as the spiralling pattern of internal killings and suicide bomb attacks are concerned. The more significant feature is that much of the violence is directed against the Pak army. It is no coincidence that October 30 marked the first anniversary of the lethal air strike on a madrassa of the militant group, Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), in the Bajaur Agency — an attack which at the time was believed to have been conducted by the US Air Force, but which the Musharraf regime insisted was conducted by the PAF. Since then there have been a number of audacious attacks specifically targeting the military. The Lal Masjid operation has only heightened the anti-Musharraf/anti- military sentiment in the more remote parts of Pakistan where the medieval Islamist-cum-Taliban fervour is at its peak.

The Swat district in the NWFP has been in the news over the last week for the violent battles between the military and local militants led by Maulana Fazlullah, with the latter seeming to have got the upper hand. The truce that had been declared was short-lived and the public execution of six military personnel by the militants has once again demonstrated the boldness with which a non-state entity is flexing its muscle against the Pakistani state. This is not an isolated incident. In early October, another Taliban commander, Baitullah Mehsud, captured over 280 military personnel, and executed three as revenge for Musharraf’s anti-terrorism policies.

Preliminary analysis would suggest that this is a classic case of the chickens coming home to roost as far as the Pak military’s not-so-covert support to religious extremism is concerned. Some in India might also derive quiet satisfaction that the Musharraf penchant for running with the jehadi hare and hunting with the anti-terrorism hound has been exposed. Black humour doing the rounds in Pakistan talks about how Musharraf has finally caught up with Karzai — both portrayed as US puppets, whose writ now extends to the perimeters of the presidential compounds.

But this ‘serves Musharraf right’ feeling can be misplaced. A holistic review of Pakistan’s gradual drift into Islamism, which goes back to the early fifties, and the manner in which the state connived to stoke intra-Islam sectarianism which excluded both the Shias and the Ahmadis as lesser beings, while facilitating the gradual ascendancy of the Punjabi Sunni male Muslim citizen, is instructive. It offers some clues to the current internal violence. While the Ayub Khan-Zulfikar Bhutto combine pandered to the Islamic clergy, the Zia decade (1977-88) was the most virulent in its Islamisation drive. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan at the time helped in no small measure to politically legitimise and socially deify the determined mujahedin warrior fired by righteous religious fervour — and as local belief has it — the Cold War was actually won by the mujahedin.

What has changed radically in the intervening two decades (from 1988 to September 11, 2001) is the profile of the non-state entity — both in terms of military efficacy and the objective being pursued. The latter has been transformed from a purely nationalist, political goal — removal of Soviet forces — to a more supra-national, politico-religious macro one — the Holy Grail of imposing an inflexible, intolerant, misogynistic, anti-liberal version of Wahabi-Salafi derived pan-Islamism. It is this agenda that provides the supra-political underpinning to the military contestation now taking place in Swat, Waziristan and the Lal Masjid.

To the credit of the liberal constituency in Pakistan, some voices have been raised — cautioning the Musharraf regime about what this pattern of violence portends for the credibility of the Pak army and the very idea of the state and the elusive Jinnah vision. Pakistan faces a complex and inter-related four-pronged crisis — political, constitutional, socio-religious and internal security. Regional stability, including India’s core interests, will be best served if the Musharraf regime prevails — despite all the opprobrium that is otherwise attached to them.

The writer is a security analyst