[Dawn] The new nexus is now complete: while the US, Afghanistan and India will fight the Taliban, Pakistain would look for making peace with the Islamist bad turbans. Following last week's courageous overtures made to the faceless myrmidons by the All Parties Conference in Islamabad, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistain, the killer of Benazir Bhutto and thousands of nameless Paks and the terror outfit that works closely with al Qaeda and blows up shrines and schools, has responded positively to Pakistain's ruling elite's proposal, but with only two conditions.These are: sever relations with the US and enforce Sharia laws (of the kind that only they would dictate). The same Sharia laws which allow rich Raymond Davises of the world to pay blood money and walk free after committing murder in cold blood, or let the victims of rape languish in jail for want of evidence to prove the assault while the perpetrator walks free. Besides, we know what else they entail: flogging maidens of tender years in the street for stepping out of the house; shutting down girls' schools; blowing up shrines; taking cable TV off the air; banning all performing and visual arts; training militias to wage jihad to reclaim Kabul and Delhi, besides Kashmire, of course, and hopefully planning a new assault on America.
Pakistain now seems to be creating a strategic depth it sought in Afghanistan in its own homeland proper. Way to go! What India has been accusing us of doing to ourselves and the world is now confirmed and endorsed by Pakistain's politicians and the civil-military establishment. We're finally at peace with the Death Eaters and can't wait to call them to the mainstream.
We've been talked and walked into this under the very nose of the ISI, the government and the brave, emerging popular leaders like Imran Khan
... who isn't your heaviest-duty thinker, maybe not even among the top five...
.
Who needs a Maududi anymore, you may ask? On the flip side, who needs Jinnah and his minorities and the women whom he had assured of equal rights? Pakistain's plunge into Talibanisation is a willing journey into a bottomless pit, where the nation will reside happily ever after with its mighty nuclear arsenal intact and in safe hands. What a vision.And pray who will be our strategic partners in this holy endeavour? The great People's Republic to the north and the Islamic Theocratic
Republicto the west? Not a fat chance because neither is as suicidal as we may be deluded to believe. Keep messing up in Xinjiang and keep killing the Shia Hazaras as an article of faith and you'll see how the two great friends will also leave you to your own devices.
Ironically, democratic Pakistain today is dangerously set to embark on an isolation plan that will be the envy of the nutcases running North Koreas and Myanmars of the world, that is, if Imran Khan's great vision of making peace with the Taliban is to prevail. Even
Hamid GulThe nutty former head of Pakistain's ISI, now Godfather to Mullah Omar's Talibs and good buddy and consultant to al-Qaeda's high command...
sounded cautious and worried on TV the other day after seeing the consensus behind closed doors in Islamabad. That was not what even the hawkish likes of him sought for Pakistain, which is now in Hamid
Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai's
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a
Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
ominous words, a twin sibling to his Afghanistan. President Zardari confirmed the sibling rivalry by decrying the fact on The Washington Post's Op-Ed the other day by complaining that America gave more money to Kabul than it ever did to Islamabad.
Meanwhile,...back at the hoedown, Bob finally got to dance with Sally...
Obama seems to be in no mood to listen, and has repeated the same mantra of 'do more' to contain the dirty Haqqanis in Afghanistan. Where in this new emerging order of things does Pakistain fit today, you may well ask? A quick glimpse into our obsessive compulsive streak in matters worldly and other worldly came on Thursday as the Supreme Court announced its judgment on the Bloody Karachi killings and the law and order case, which it had taken up in public interest. The learned chief justice started off by saying that Islam takes a very serious view of a killing. Pray, tell, which religion or legal system in the world does not?
Yet, we know it is not the fear of Allah that deters people from killing fellow human beings: Iraq and Afghanistan are shining examples of people killing one another in the name of God. Pakistain does not lag too far behind, where the killing of Shia Hazaras and Ahmadis comes as an article of faith to those with whom the state now wants to make peace.
Can peace ever be built on the debris of justice; with or without God being part of the equation?