Back to the Future
Pakistan has lived for more than two decades under the threat of a religious Sword of Damocles, after the Talibs took over in Afghanistan in 1996 our “future” began to take name and shape, the Talibanisation of Pakistan. A very vocal, religious minority in Pakistan held a rather submissive and terrified liberal majority in virtual thrall, threatening to convert our present back to the past and to make our future bleak. While religious teaching is more than necessary it can never be a complete education by itself, given the technological advances, theology is hopelessly mired in the past. Instead of investing in more schools and colleges, we allowed Madrassahs to move into this vacuum, proportionately increasing ignorance among our school going children. An absence of basic world knowledge among our youth virtually asked to be exploited by the religiously motivated. The religious rioting in Pakistan in September/October this year had the streets brimming over with sympathy for the Taliban. The youth yelled their throats hoarse and lungs out in support of “their” heroes Osama bin Laden and Mullah Umar, a frenzied thousand or so crossing over into Afghanistan to join the ranks already fighting with the Taliban. Moulvi Sufi Mohammad of the Tehrik Shahriah Nifaz Muhammadi (TSNM) flamboyantly led them across the border on prime time TV, first in he was first out, abandoning them on the “every man for himself” basis and making it safely back across. Sales of Osama bin Laden T-shirts nose-dived when Osama took off on the age-old principle, discretion is the better part of valour. Heroes are supposed to fight and die fighting, not to slink from hole to hole in the night like common thieves.
Untangling the Taliban
On the run for more than a fortnight since Oct 8, 2001, the Taliban faithful rallied somewhat to make a last stand in the five Provincial strongholds around their spiritual capital Kandahar. Once “foreign influence” on Mullah Umar in the form of Osama bin Laden took off for parts unknown, possibly deep into Pashtun heartland in the mountainous area astride the Pak-Afghan border between Khost and Jalalabad, rumours of imminent collapse in Kandahar because of disunity and internal dissension among the hard-core faithful, seemed to abate. The first US ground troops finally landed in Afghanistan, the Marines securing an airfield in the desert south-west of Kandahar as a firm base. Kandahar is indefensible and will certainly fall but widespread destruction and collateral damage to civilians all over Afghanistan could have been avoided by concentrating on simply isolating this city in the first place in keeping with the primary war aims. Airpower diplomacy of the late 20th century has not quite replaced gunboat diplomacy of the nineteenth. Starting with Iraq in 1991, the zero-sum casualties air-war strategy continued with Bosnia and Kosovo. In the end it is the infantry that must go in, the infantry which must hunt down the enemy. You may call them Special Forces, Rangers, Marines, whatever, high-tech cannot replace the foot-sloggers, they are the only ones who can hold ground. When the “lucky bomb” theory did not work, the only option left is the physical use of ground troops to root out the Taliban hierarchy.