The announcement that the Taliban are pulling out of Buner district (midway between the Swat valley and Islamabad) should not lull anyone into complacency; the Taliban threat to Pakistan remains as real and immediate as before. For one thing, reports trickling in cast doubt on whether there has in fact been a complete pull-out from Buner, or just the pretence of one. For another, reports earlier in the week had spoken of the Taliban moving into a couple of areas on the outskirts of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, as also four or five neighbouring districts, while also seeking to encircle Peshawar, where they have launched repeated attacks on Nato supply lines. It is already known that the Taliban have established links with some of the Pakistani Punjab-based militant groups (which is what enabled the recent strikes in Lahore). It is hard to believe that people who have a messianic sense of mission would give up all their long-term goals and retreat to their stronghold of Swat. If there is at all a real retreat, it can only be a tactical move; the long-term threat remains.
Some questions need answers. The most obvious is why the Pakistan government and army remained mute bystanders while the Taliban took charge of Buner, for all practical purposes without any kind of a fight? Was there any tacit agreement on this, and, if so, why? And if it was so easy for the Pakistan president and army chief to threaten tough action and thereby persuade the Taliban to withdraw from Buner, is there more to this than meets the eye? In other words, even at a stage when the world is beginning to worry about the future of Pakistan, are the Taliban in cahoots with elements in the Pakistani army, and specifically its Inter-Services Intelligence wing? In other words, are the Pakistan authorities continuing to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds?
There has been speculation that Islamabad’s game might have been to pressure the United States into leaning on India to re-start negotiations on Jammu & Kashmir, and indeed to make some concessions so as to encourage Pakistan to focus on the “war on terror”. If so, the plan came unstuck when Washington signalled very clearly that it expected Islamabad to get its act together, and to understand that Pakistan’s existential threat comes not from India but from within its own borders. On getting the message loud and clear, Islamabad quickly gave the Taliban the right signals and they in turn have made a show of pulling out of Buner and returning to Swat.
This reconstruction of events could be the product of nothing more than a fevered imagination. Beyond a point, it is also not very important because the vital issue is what will happen in the coming weeks and months. There is no doubt that the average Pakistani has become profoundly anti-American and is hostile to the “war on terror”. The army’s ability to take on the Taliban is in doubt, both on account of its dismal record in past engagements and because a fifth of the Pakistan army has been recruited from the Pathans of the North-West Frontier Province, which is the base from which the Taliban recruited their cadres before moving further afield. This being the case, and given the general incompetence of the Zardari government, it is hard to believe that the future will see Pakistan suddenly moving on to a new trajectory. The underlying social and economic issues which have led to the present juncture are long-term causes that the Zardari government is plainly incapable of addressing. In short, the scenario remains a bleak one. While the prediction that the present Pakistan state will collapse in six months may or may not turn out to be correct, India needs to be prepared for just that eventuality.
