We must set aside a misconception at the outset. Given the concerns of the US, and the nature of reporting, it would seem as if the problem are the Taliban. But the Taliban are not the cause, they are the result of the Talibanization of Pakistan’s State and society. The reluctance with which Pakistan Army and Frontier Guards have been dealing with them itself points to the extent to which Pakistani forces are Talibanized. It also points to earth faults that no purposeful adversary would miss: one of the reasons these forces have been dragging their feet is that the Frontier Guards consist largely of Pashtun soldiery (bossed by Punjabi officers); a fair proportion – 20 per cent, on some estimates -- of the soldiers of the Army also are Pashtuns; they are naturally reluctant to kill their own. They are equally reluctant to kill those who have taken up the very banner on which Pakistan’s forces are reared, namely jihad. The net result has been put well by my perceptive friend, Sushant Sareen: “The bottom line is that instead of the Pakistani Army exercising control over its jihadist assets,” he writes, “the Army itself has become a strategic asset of the jihadis.”

Today it is being pressed by the Americans to move against the Taliban. Will it move only against those limbs of the Taliban that are traditionally opposed to following the Pakistani line? Or will it also move against those limbs – that led by Jallaluddin and Serajuddin Haqqani, for instance – that have had the closest links with the ISI and itself, and have done their bidding? Even if it moves against the Taliban, will it move against the jihadi organizations it has reared to destabilize India?

... contd.