Motus Mentis

According to this item at CNN, the Pakistani government is reporting that the Taliban have completely withdrawn from their recent conquests in the Buner province near Islamabad. This is absurd, of course, as no advancing army would willingly abandon territory they have won except as a tactical feint, and given that Pakistan has seen fit so far only to send a ragtag band of poorly trained men to confront the insurgency in Buner, such a move would make no sense.

It seems, rather, that they have simply established control, garrisoned the area with local sympathists, and withdrawn their mobile fighters so as to coalesce their masse de manoeuvre for actions elsewhere, in keeping with a strategy of general disruption. We read:

A Pakistani government official said Friday that the insurgents had completely withdrawn from the district by the end of the week, but a human rights group said people in Buner were reporting that local Taliban remained in the district.

And senior U.S. officials cautioned that any withdrawal by the Taliban was likely meaningless and that the fundamentalist group now holds large areas of the country with the government seemingly unable to stop them.

“We’re certainly moving closer to the tipping point,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said on NBC’s “Today” show Friday.

Indeed we are. I am, frankly, surprised how little attention this is getting; it is by far the direst crisis unfolding in the world right now. In the next few days and weeks it is going to get worse, not better, and despite what Fareed Zakaria says, it is very difficult to see just who is going to stop them from getting their hands on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Even if the media still, for the most part, see this as a below-the-fold item, you can be certain that the military do not, and I’m guessing that things are getting very busy in Afghanistan right about now.

All very distracting, of course, right when we need it the least. Almost as distracting as last summer’s Olympics, in fact: interested observers might want to keep an eye on the Caucasus.