Beauty is in the eye of the beholder?

June 14, 2010 Leave a comment

Pakistanis have been suggesting that the US should talk to the Taliban, otherwise the US strategy will fail, and Mr. Obama seems to agree. The Defense Secrataty, Mr. Gates, believes that you cannot say that one Taliban is good, and the other not good, but agrees with his boss that there is a need to talk to some Taliban commanders.

Pakistan has nurtured the Afghan Taliban since its inception, and in fact the Pakistani military’s secret service, the ISI, created it and helped it take over Afghanistan as a ‘strategic depth’ against India. Although tables turned after 9/11, the Government of Pakistan admits it is reaching out to them at all levels. It is the Pakistani Taliban that Pakistanis want to root out, because they are causing mayhem within their borders; they are the ‘bad’ Taliban, according to them.

I think talking to any Taliban would be a bad idea, and would only foster more terrorism. On the other hand, the US should encourage other countries in the region, like India – which has sunk $1.2 billion so far, to continue to assist in building Afghani infrastructure. After all, Afghanistan needs all the help it can get, especially now that we know that it has over $1 trillion worth of untapped natural reserves.


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Land of the impure?

June 14, 2010 Leave a comment

Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek explains why Pakistan keeps exporting jihad, and is a terrorism supermarket. He traces the beginnings of this culture shortly after the birth of this nation over 60 years ago*, and quotes the book written by the current Pakistani ambassador to the US, Mr. Husain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military.

Mr. Zakaria alludes to the classification of Taliban by the Pakistani military as good and bad. The good Taliban attacks Westerners, Afghans and Indians, but spare Pakistanis. The bad Taliban attack Pakistan, and the Pakistani Army has tried to smoke them out of their hideouts in South Waziristan.

The US and its allies have been prodding the Pakistani Armed Forces to launch similar offensives in North Waziristan, but is faced with countless excuses why it is not a right time to do so. Perhaps the real reason is that this area is home to the ‘good’ Taliban, as seen by the Pakistani Army.

A study published by the London School of Economics claims that Pakistan is Funding and training Taliban in Afghanistan. Of course, the Government and the Army of Pakistan deny it, but apparantly a senior official admits to militancy’s deep roots in Pakistan.


*The raison d’être of Pakistan since 1947, when it was partitioned from India, was a ‘two-nation’ theory, which expounds that Hindus and Muslims are two separate cultures that cannot live together peacefully. This theorem was busted in 1971 with the formation of Bangladesh, when it became evident that the glue to unity was something other than religion. Six decades later, it seems that Pakistan is still having an identity crisis, as explained by Ali Sethi in a NY Times op-ed piece, One Myth, Many Pakistans.

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