The Torch: The spread of the Taliban in Pakistan

Several pieces paint a really distressing picture:

1) Taliban retains grip on Pakistan district [see second part of this post]
Many have left Buner, but many are still patrolling the streets and broadcasting their messages despite warnings from the government.

Although recent headlines suggest that the Taliban has left Buner district, only 60 miles from the Pakistani capital, the facts Saturday told another story.

Throughout the day, militants in black turbans with cloths over their faces could be seen brandishing automatic weapons in vehicles around the bazaars and on the main roads. Their stereos blared religious songs, and their presence was particularly evident at strategic locations such as key intersections...

2) In Pakistan, Guile Helps Taliban Gain

Initially, Buner was a hard place for the Taliban to crack. When they attacked a police station in the valley district last year, the resistance was fearless. Local people picked up rifles, pistols and daggers, hunted down the militants and killed six of them.

But it was not to last. In short order this past week the Taliban captured Buner, a strategically vital district just 60 miles northwest of the capital, Islamabad. The militants flooded in by the hundreds, startling Pakistani and American officials with the speed of their advance.

The lesson of Buner, local politicians and residents say, is that the dynamic of the Taliban insurgency, as methodical and slow-building as it has been, can change suddenly, and the tactics used by the Taliban can be replicated elsewhere.

The Taliban took over Buner through both force and guile — awakening sleeping sympathizers, leveraging political allies, pretending at peace talks and then crushing what was left of their opponents, according to the politicians and the residents interviewed.

Though some of the militants have since pulled back, they still command the high points of Buner and have fanned out to districts even closer to the capital.

That Buner fell should be no surprise, local people say. Last fall, the inspector general of police in North-West Frontier Province, Malik Naveed Khan, complained that his officers were being attacked and killed by the hundreds.

Mr. Khan was so desperate — and had been so thoroughly abandoned by the military and the government — that he was relying on citizen posses like the one that stood up to the Taliban last August.

Today, the hopes that those civilian militias inspired are gone, brushed away by the realization that Pakistanis can do little to stem the Taliban advance if their government and military will not help them.

The people of Buner got nothing for their bravery. In December, the Taliban retaliated for the brazenness of the resistance in the district, sending a suicide bomber to disrupt voting during a by-election. More than 30 people were killed and scores were wounded...

With their success in Buner, the Taliban felt flush with success and increasingly confident that they could repeat the template, residents and analysts said. In the main prize, the richest and most populous province, Punjab, in eastern Pakistan, the Taliban are relying on the sleeper cells of other militant groups, including the many fighters who had been trained by the Pakistani military for combat in Kashmir, and now felt abandoned by the state, they said.

It would not be difficult for the Taliban to seize Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, by shutting down the airport and blocking the two main thoroughfares from Islamabad, a Western official with long experience in the province said.

At midweek, a convoy of heavily armed Taliban vehicles was seen barreling along the four-lane motorway between Islamabad and Peshawar, according to Mr. Sherpao, the former minister of the interior.

Across North-West Frontier Province, the Taliban are rapidly consolidating power by activating cells that consisted of a potent mix of jihadist groups, he said.

In some places, the Taliban have entered mosques saying they had come only to preach, but in fact the strategy is to spread fear that pushes people into submission and demoralizes the police, he said.

Everywhere, they have preyed on the miseries of the poor, saying that Islamic courts would settle their complaints against the rich. “Every district is falling into their lap,” Mr. Sherpao said.

3) My Country, Caving to the Taliban

...
As a Taliban insurgency gains strength in Pakistan, my country seems to be preparing to surrender. In areas where the Taliban formally hold sway, such as Swat, people have bowed to their guns. And in the heartland, in Punjab and other regions, there is a disquieting acceptance of the inevitability of the Taliban's rise to power.

Over the past two years, Pakistani civil society has driven a military dictator from power and managed to force an elected government to restore our top judges to the bench. But when it comes to the Taliban, it seems incapable of speaking with one voice.

There is little sense of an impending crisis, just the blithe belief that the Taliban are not as bad as they seem, and that in any case, Pakistan's fractious government and security services are no match for these men with beards and guns. I hear vague comparisons with the days before the Iranian revolution; the only problem is that we don't seem to have a Khomeini, at least not yet. And we do have nuclear bombs.

In my hometown in Punjab, a businessman friend was inspired by the news from Swat. "If two hundred Taliban take over our town, then we can all start making our own decisions. Who needs this corrupt system anyway?" My friend is a typical middle-class conservative Pakistani, and people in cities across the country share his excitement. I tried to reason with him: "You drop your daughters off at school every morning, you always have music on in your car. That would be unthinkable if they take over." He hesitated and then rolled out the explanation that most urban Pakistanis offer.

"What they are doing in Swat is their Pashtun culture," he said, speaking of the ethnic group that dominates western Pakistan. "Islam says education is compulsory for every man and woman. And we Punjabis don't have their culture."

I have confronted the same naive assertion on TV talk shows and in Urdu newspapers: The Taliban ideology is sound; it's their methods that need to be modified. Somehow people hope that when the Islamists march into Lahore or Islamabad, they'll suddenly realize that Islam is a religion of peace, that music is good and that girls should be allowed to go to school.

People who have experienced Taliban rule have no such illusions...

Mohammed Hanif, a special correspondent for the BBC's Urdu service, is the author of the novel, "A Case of Exploding Mangoes."

4) Disarray on Pakistan Taleban threat
The Pakistani government and army seem incapable or unwilling to tackle the Taleban threat in the north-west, argues guest columnist Ahmed Rashid ["veteran Pakistani journalist and author"].

Unprecedented political and military disarray in Pakistan and a growing public feeling of helplessness is helping fuel the rapid expansion of the Taleban across northern Pakistan, bringing them closer to paralysing state institutions in their bid to seize total power.

Even though most Pakistanis agree that the Pakistani Taleban and their extremist allies now pose the biggest threat to the Pakistani state since its creation, both the army and the government appear to be in denial of reality and the facts.

Within weeks of concluding a deal with the government on the imposition of Islamic law in the strategically located Swat valley, the Taleban have already broken the agreement by refusing to disarm, taken control of the region's administration, police and education while spilling out into adjacent valleys.

'No need to worry'

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani persuaded parliament to pass the Sharia agreement into law, insisting the Taleban pose no threat to the state. Threats by the Taleban to abrogate the agreement forced President Asif Ali Zardari to hurriedly sign the bill, even though he had tried delaying tactics...

The Taleban have now infiltrated western and southern Punjab province with the help of Punjabi extremist groups, the second largest city of Lahore and the southern port city of Karachi.

Even more surprising has been the attitude of the army, which has declined all international and local pressure to curb the spread of the Taleban.

The army's only military response was when it bombed the tribal areas after 25 of its soldiers were killed in a suicide bomb attack near Hangu in North West Frontier Province on 18 April.

That dismayed many Pakistanis because it showed the army was willing to only attack the Taleban when its own soldiers had suffered.

Groups of militias who have resisted the Taleban in Swat and other places were left to fight on their own without the military's support for weeks on end.

With the Taleban taking control of Buner district - although they have now said they will withdraw - and Dir as well as moving north to take over the Karakoram Highway that links Pakistan to China, there is the fear that Pakistan will soon reach a tipping point.

The Taleban recently increased operations in Buner district

With the Taleban having opened so many fronts, it will soon be impossible for the army to respond to the multiple threats it faces.

US and Nato

The army's rationale for doing nothing appears deeply irrational to many Pakistanis.

The army still insists that India remains the major threat, so 80% of its forces are still aligned on the Indian border instead of defending the country against Taleban expansion...

The Pakistani Taleban, even while continuing their penetration of central Pakistan, are also mobilising fresh recruits from all over the country to go help their Afghan Taleban brothers resist the newly arriving Western troops.

For Pakistanis and the international community the refusal of either the government or the army to respond to its greatest threat since the country split apart with the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 reflects a chronic failure of leadership, will and commitment to the people of Pakistan.