Yesterday’s statement by the Taleban, claiming responsibility for Wednesday’s suicide bomb attack in Lahore in which at least 24 people died and over 300 were wounded, is a trumpet blast of utter depravity. It is an open declaration of war on Pakistan. Claiming the attack to be in revenge for the army’s campaign in Swat, the Taleban’s regional commander Hakimullah Mehsud promised further bombs in Lahore as well as in Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Multan and called on people to leave the cities for their own safety.
If anyone in Pakistan had a vestige of sympathy for this group of demented killers, they cannot do so now. They stand revealed in all their putrid malevolence as the mortal enemy of ordinary Pakistanis. They are a cancer that has to be destroyed; otherwise it will destroy Pakistan. Yesterday’s bomb blasts in Peshawar — almost certainly the Taleban’s work — provide further stark evidence of that.
These people are terrorists and thugs, not heroic warriors for their religion, as they claim. Anyone who imagines that or who takes the view that they have a point and should be talked to, is bankrupt — politically as well as morally. Murder is their only form of argument. Anyone who disagrees with them or who gets in their way is mercilessly cut down; individuals beheaded, larger groups blown to eternity.
There can be no accommodation with them. It is not simply that they have proved that they are not to be trusted, that they are not men of their word; they sent in fighters into Buner after agreeing to a cease-fire in return for the government concession of Shariah law in Swat. The reality, which Mehsud’s chilling threat makes blindingly clear, is that they are opposed to everything that Pakistan stands for. They say the constitution is “haraam” (forbidden), that democracy is haraam, that education and financial aid for Pakistani women is haraam, that obeying its government is haraam, that seeking redress in its courts is haraam. Whatever anyone thinks about the present government led by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari, can anyone deny it was elected by the people of Pakistan in free and fair elections? Moreover, in those elections, they did not vote for religious extremists. As for the courts, Pakistanis took to the streets in their thousands to ensure the reinstatement of the country’s top judges.
The only thing that is forbidden are suicide attacks and beheadings — the Taleban’s tactics — and last week the country’s religious leaders and scholars said it in what amounts to a decisive condemnation of the Taleban. Rightly so; men like Mehsud and Sufi Muhammad bin Alhazrat Hassan, the founder of the main militant organization in Swat, Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, and his son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah think they have an exclusive monopoly on Islam, that it is theirs to pontificate on and decide who is and who is not a Muslim. These people are not even religious scholars: Sufi Muhammad is just a village cleric. Nor are they logical: Where are the millions who they have told to leave the cities supposed to go?
No wonder that most Pakistanis, who have seen their own moderate voices drowned out by the extremists’ rant, have had enough of them and their attempts to hijack the country. Mehsud’s declaration of war merely serves as the clincher, the proof that the Taleban are their greatest enemy.
A fatal mistake by North Korea?
The Independent yesterday commented on North Korea, saying in part:
The Korean crisis is growing in intensity. Monday’s nuclear test by Pyongyang has been followed by the suspension of a truce that ended the peninsula war more than half a century ago. Of course, it is nothing new for North Korea to present a hostile face to the world. But this crisis feels particularly dangerous because it is so hard to see what game Pyongyang is playing. In recent years, bellicose gestures from the regime have been interpreted as efforts to extract aid from its neighbors and drag America to the negotiating table. Yet this cannot be the explanation now because a US delegation has visited the region this year. The channels of communication are already open.
It has been suggested that this crisis could be the result of an effort by Kim Jong-Il to shore up his authority at home or to engineer a smooth succession to his favored son.
Yet this explanation also fails to convince since, by conducting another nuclear test, Pyongyang has alienated China, its only ally on the international stage. This opens up another terrifying possibility: That these nuclear maneuvers by Pyongyang represent not reasoned policy, but frenzied paranoia.
Yet grim as the situation is, it is possible that a door of opportunity has opened this week. Pyongyang’s alienation of China could prove a fatal mistake. If Beijing halts deliveries of oil and food to its economic basket case of a neighbor, its days would be numbered. China has been loath to take any action to destabilize North Korea in the past because of its fear that the regime’s collapse would unleash a wave of starving refugees across its borders.
