The dazed and tottering government of Pakistan, humiliated by its attempt to appease the Taliban in Swat, is now making a conspicuous display of indignation. It has nullified the pigeonhearted agreement it signed with the vile jihadists, and has instructed the army to head back up there and have another go.
They will no doubt push the Taliban out of certain areas, along with hordes of wretched civilians, but whether they will hold what they take from their ruthless, adaptive, and highly mobile foes, or whether they have the stomach for this fight generally, is another matter. Collusion with the Taliban is reported to be common, and there appears to be a general reluctance on the part of Pakistan’s fighting men to kill fellow Muslims for the sake of a secular, post-colonial nation-state.
We will see how this goes.
11 Comments
The so-called “truce” with the Taliban could never last. The Taliban’s objectives have been clear since the attack on Mumbai, which was designed to keep Pakistan’s army concentrated along the border with India. Both Afghanistan and Pakistan need to outlaw the Taliban and set to eradicating it from both sides of their border. Hopefully, as the Pakistani army pushes further into the Swat Valley and northwestern provinces, the forces in Afghanistan will be waiting on the other side of the border with clinched fists. The Taliban are, at once, vicious fighters and absolute cowards. They’re vicious fighters because their objective is martyrdom. They’re cowards because they murder unarmed villagers and perpetrate violence against women wherever they go. The Taliban represents a diseased organ in the body of Islam. It is too bad that more Muslims don’t go there to fight them rather than the people who live there.
It’s about time the Pakistan army got rid of these rag heads!
Trusting the taliban to keep their word, after agreeing to their obscene terms is, is the same as stopping pest control in a home. Vermin doesn’t see it as a compromise, but as a victory, and will spread rapidly into every corner.
Hopefully, Pakistan knows this now, and will do all in it’s power to eradicate, fumigate and cleanse itself of this islamization of their country.
It’s not entirely realistic to expect universal sympathy in Pakistan for “resisting Islamization”; the nation was founded explicitly to be a homeland for Muslims, after all.
malcom,
It’s a civil war and teliban are not really as dangerous to the Pakstani gov as fox media would want to believe. They are annoying but never dangerous enough to wage a serious war that can have negative societal impact… by the way, your logic applies to Israel as well, as it was founded explicitly to be a homeland for jews. Also please refrain from using inflammatory terms such Islamization as if it is a disease. Islam like any other religion can be good and can be at times bad. Christians through “War Saints” killed millions of people, mostly Muslims but also jews and pagans , in the name of their lord jesus and so are the Jews in regard to Palestinians and so on.. Islam is an ambitious religion and so are christainty and in that so are the Atheists, who have formed their own theology and soon they will have their own terrorists.. so to make statements like these is surely uninformed and may also be racist.
Racist? How so? I don’t recall saying anything whatsoever about race.
Actually this is not news.. there was a warning about you on some guy’s blog last month that you are an Islamaphobic who advances anti-Islamic agendas, and it seems to be true otherwise you would have replied to the points i stated. You can start by talking about “war Saints”.. you can google them if you don’t know..
Sam,
Indeed I do criticize radical Islam in these pages; I consider it a serious threat to civilization. Certainly my own expression of my “agenda” — occasional blog posts — takes a rather less sanguinary form than, for example, beheading infidels, splashing acid in the faces of schoolgirls, and flying airplanes into office buildings.
As for my alleged “Islamophobia”: a “phobia” is an irrational fear, in case you aren’t clear about just what the word means (I think most people aren’t, or they wouldn’t throw the term around so carelessly). To be wary of, and to speak out against, a extremist and implacable religious ideology that has as its explicit goal the subjugation of our civilization, and which has repeatedly demonstrated a grotesque disregard for human life, and a willing embrace of the most repugnant forms of brutality in the service of that goal, is hardly, I think, irrational.
I am well aware that there are those who view all this as a religious crusade, and who delight in the thought of slaughtering Muslims in Jesus’ name. This is just the same sort of religious extremism in different garb, and I certainly make no defense of it here. If you have read any of what I have written here over the years, you would know that I have no respect for fanaticism in any form, and no thirst for blood. At bottom we are engaged in a war of ideas — a battle for human minds — and the stakes are high. Ideas are fought with words, not knives or bullets, and that is all I do here.
i do understand what “Islamaphobia” means, otherwise i wouldn’t have used it. Unlike you who talk about Islam from the radical eyes of our “irrational media”. You clearly look at Islam from the corner of the 19 hijackers, Talaban and the few extremists who carry the same hatred towards Muslims as well as Christains or anyone who disagrees with them. What i am trying to get you to understand is that YOU are no different! as you seem to be attacking Islam in the name of attacking Radical Islam. Those guys are no different than KKK or the republican party, if you ask me, but you are not focusing on them as much or as vigorously. You need to start making the most important distinction between what we all despise; Radical religion starting from Judaism,Christianity to Islam and ending with Atheists or militant Buddhist. The ideas of hate, killing as despised by 99% of Muslims who are caught in the middle between their own radicals and radicals from the west asking to apologize for what they never adhere to. Finally i have one suggestion for you since you preoccupied with this subject is to read more about it through Muslim publications, and if you allow me i would suggest this book that i just finished reading last week; it is called “How to win a cosmic war..”
Lastly, i have seen some of your comments on other topic and you do come cross as an Islamaphobic, but this can be attributed to you not knowing much about Islam, and don’t we all fear what we don’t know.
Sam,
Again, I have often made it clear that I consider fanaticism of any sort dangerous, and religious fanaticism particularly so; I have often criticized fundamentalist Christianity here. I don’t “need to start” speaking out against religious fanaticism generally; I have been doing exactly that for a very long time.
Passing lightly over your silly little dig about my “not knowing much about Islam”, I do think a strong case can be made that Islam has particular qualities, both innate and historical, that make it, even more so than any of the other major religions of the world, particularly susceptible to fundamentalism — and that make it, in its more fundamental forms, particularly incompatible with the central political and social philosophies of Western culture.
Despite what you would like to think of me, this is not KKK-style bigotry, or hate, or racism, and I would like nothing better than for everyone to get along happily. It is simply the result of a sincere and dispassionate effort to understand the causes and underpinnings of this ancient struggle. But my view is borne out, I think, by any careful study of Islam, and by the blunt historical fact of fourteen centuries of perpetual conflict between these two great world-systems. Even Vartan Gregorian, in his sincere and erudite apologia Islam: A Mosaic, Not A Monolith, had to acknowledge, in every example he offered of reconciliation between moderate Islam and the West, a steady pull toward the fundamentalism at Islam’s core.
Finally, in response to your “YOU are no different” remark, I must say it seems that YOU are no different: very quick to see informed and reasonable criticism as a rabid and bigoted “attack”, and to interpret a perfectly rational concern about the threat of radical Islam, even in the wake of the catastrophic attacks of 9/11, as a kind of “phobia”. As soon as one touches the “third rail” — criticism of religion (except Christianity, which seems to be fair game in the self-loathing West these days) — out come the usual reactions: accusations of ignorance and racism, and even comparisons to Hitler.
Indeed Vartan Gregorian’s is an apologia. I would not brag about knowing Islam through one or just that book, but that’s me..i gave you one but there are more, its up to you really..