DAWN: THE militants’ tactical retreat from Buner, an armed operation against them in Dir and some formal assurances by the army top brass have given most Pakistanis a sense of respite. It should now be possible to comprehend the neo-Taliban phenomenon without which they cannot be overcome.
The armed bands engaged in terrorist activities in the northern parts of Pakistan are called neo-Taliban because it is necessary to distinguish them from the Taliban that overran Afghanistan in the 1990s and about whom conservative Pakistanis entertain some wholesome notions. They condone the Afghan Taliban’s excesses against women and their animalistic hostility to arts and culture, because they want to see the same done in Pakistan. At the same time these elements still praise the Afghan Taliban for unifying their country, for checking violent disorder and for disarming non-state militias. And, latterly, they are hailed for resisting foreign intrusion.
While the neo-Taliban operating against Pakistan can outdo the Afghan Taliban in their animus towards women and democratic institutions, they display none of the characteristics attributed to the latter by their Pakistani supporters. Unlike the Afghan Taliban they are dividing Pakistan and not consolidating its unity; they are increasing violent disorder and not suppressing it; and they are raising non-state militias, not disarming the existing ones.
Finally, the Afghan Taliban could claim to be fighting for their motherland and resisting ‘imperialism’; the neo-Taliban have invaded their patrons’ motherland and are fighting for a brand of imperialism Allama Iqbal had denounced in his 1930 address. Thus, the neo-Taliban cannot be favourably compared with their Afghan predecessors.
A large number of Pakistanis have been confused by the neo-Taliban’s rhetoric that they want to enforce the Islamic Sharia. Nothing can be further from the truth. The neo-Taliban’s precursors in Afghanistan too were not driven by their love of the Sharia. For all one knows, Hikmatyar, Rabbani and Masud, targets of the Taliban offensive, also swore by the Sharia. The Afghan Taliban had a definite political objective — to capture Afghanistan for themselves. The neo-Taliban too have a purely political objective — to establish their rule in a part of Pakistan and if possible over the whole of it. >>> By I.A. Rehman | Thursday, April 30, 2009
