Moreover, when it acts as a result of external pressure – of the Americans, in this case – before we hail the turn-around we need to ascertain the bargain that, say, the Americans have agreed to in turn. Have they assured Pakistan that, once they leave, it will be free to exercise control in Afghanistan? Have they agreed that, as the Pakistan Army moves to crush the Taliban, they in turn will turn the screws on India over Kashmir?

For us there is an additional reason to sit up. There has been one thing alone that has united even the non-Taliban State and Army: hatred for India. They have had but one shared conviction: that they have an Allah-given mandate to dismember India, and, therefore, one objective. Should the Islam-pasand terrorists acquire greater sway, the fervour against India will indeed be intensified – in all terrorist literature and rhetoric, “Amriki-Yehudi-Hindu,” “America-Israel-India,” “Palestine-Chechnya-Kashmir,” are clubbed, they are one, hyphenated expression. But there will be one change. The objective will not be to dismember India but to take it whole, and to take it for Islam. In the 1940s also the Maulanas, apart from scoffing at and lampooning Jinnah, maintained that his project was grossly misconceived: the whole of the sub-continent is open for Islam, their thesis went, and this man is confining it to two corners of it. As the decades have rolled out, it is not Jinnah who has prevailed, it is Maulana Maudoodi. Furthermore, to Islamic fundamentalism has now been added national pride: unable to squeeze the support that ISI and the Pakistan Army have been giving the Taliban and al Qaeda, the Americans have been using drones inside Pakistani territory. This has deepened resentment against the Americans, and, simultaneously, it has shown up the rulers – ineffectual in getting the Americans to cease and desist – to be nothing but double-talking puppets of Americans. As a result, the Taliban, in addition to being the “devout, if misguided” warriors for Islam, are coming to be seen as the ones who are standing up to the Americans.

... contd.