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.

... contd.