Truce Or Capitulation?

Everyone is well aware of the horrors that the demons with beards aka Taliban, perpetrated in the beautiful Swat valley recently, until the government capitulated and let them get away with murder, literally. It is like calling out truce with vermin. It looks that those who committed the most horrid and heinous brutalities like beheading innocent people are going to go scot free.

These Talibs, like cancer that spreads deep in the body, are now not only in Swat, but everywhere else too. In Peshawar and Islamabad and Lahore there is a palpable feeling that the evil is lurking somewhere in the shadows watching. Already, in Peshawar, ordinary hardened criminals, fugitives from the law, called “Mafroor� in Pashto are taking advantage of the insecure situation, and have grown their own hair and beards long, and have decided to go into flourishing business, looting and kidnapping people by putting in their lot with the bearded clergy. Some say that such looters are mostly hand in glove with high ups. For example, according to some rumors, the SIM of a mobile phone recovered from a kidnapper some time ago, showed that about 20 calls had been made from it to an ex-minister in a matter of two days when the negotiations for ransom money were being conducted for the release of a kidnapped wealthy person.

Since they live at the gates of the subcontinent, Pashtuns have been witness to sundry international upheavals of history. It is for sure hoped that they will come out of this phase as well. Once in the mid 1800’s also (like now) during a particularly barren leadership time, they got swept away briefly by Talibanesque fanatics from Bareilly who came up to impose their zealotry upon them for a short time, under the able leadership of one Maulana Ahmad Shah Barelvi.

For a while the Hindustanis from Bareilly were tolerated, but when they started crossing the limits of their hospitality by starting to meddle in Pakhtun culture, and increasingly demanded greater say in personal affairs of the locals, did the later decide finally to do away with the fanatics. Thus according to a preset signal of a fire on a hill, they all decided to rise as one against the Hindustanis, and to start slaughtering them wherever they were found within their lands. The Maulana Ahmad Shah Barelvi, with a handful of his followers made his escape good, but unfortunately near Balakot, a little beyond Abbottabad, in the picturesque hills of Hazara, he and his small band of followers were pounced upon and killed by the Sikhs, in whose side he had been a thorn, after a last desperate battle. He lies buried in Balakot, and his place of burial is now a revered shrine.

Pakhtun culture is rich. They are a proud freedom loving people. If they have been great warriors over the ages, they love their poetry, songs, dance and music with equal abandon. Over the ages they have spawned some of the great artists and intellectuals of the sub-continent. Now the Taliban in their demonical way are trying to again meddle in their culture by coercing actors, singers and other entertainers to abandon their professions and become bears like them in manners as well as appearance, by growing large beards and the works.

Threatened, the artistes are now fleeing to escape Taliban oppression. Recently, according to newspaper reports, in Peshawar they kidnapped Alamzeb Mujahid, the famous Pashtu comedian. He was subjected to untold horror and humiliation, and the only choice given to him for deliverance was to either quit showbiz or face fate worse than a mere kidnapping next time. Thus a talented artist, a veteran of hundreds of television dramas and stage shows, is forced to grow a beard and devote his life to spread Islam through joining the missionary group, Tableeghi Jumaat. Others are trying to, or have escaped. Those who cannot move to safer places have either started selling kababs or doing other menial jobs.

The Pashtuns have continuously been undermined and ignored by charlatan Pakistani leaders, and the bureaucracy both military and civilian that have ruled the roost at the centre. During the past 60 years they have been constantly denied almost every sort of modern development to bring them at par with the civilized world, because no roads, schools or hospitals have been developed in their areas. In all of this, the final nail in the coffin, so to speak, was the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan. Once the Americans saw that the Soviets were bogged down there, they immediately jumped into the arena. The mujahidin suddenly became very fashionable. Suddenly the best way to fight the red infidels was to encourage holy war, jihad against them. Suddenly out of nowhere madrassahs started sprouting ubiquitously. Jihadists were invited to come from all over the world to come and fight the Russian infidels. Religious Fanaticism and the doctrine of Islamic Jihad or Holy War at that time, thought the west, was the best strategy to fight communism, then thought to be the world’s great scourge. Thus all these holy warriors assembled from all over the globe became freedom fighters for the Americans and everyone else supporting them, and terrorists for the Russians. However with the defeat of the Soviets, all those who had keenly supported the holy war, namely the Americans and other western powers, went his or her way, but the Frankenstein monster of extreme religiosity they all had unleashed together in the region refused to go away. And of course Pakistan, being the frontline state in all of this and almost in a condition of undeclared war against the USSR was as much complicit as everyone else. In fact Pakistan went even further, after the Americans left, Pakistan's shortsighted leaders, lacking any depth of intellectualism started meddling in Afghan affairs and helped hoist the Taliban to power in Afghanistan. They thought that they would hold the strings of command over them in this way. However how can you put toothpaste back into the tube once it has come out? Now, as they say, the chickens are coming home to roost. These include a curious amalgam of local as well as foreign bearded fiends, suffering from hopeless myopia and utter disregard for human life or limb.

In the beginning of February, (according to a news report), a band of the Talibs descended upon a village in the outskirts of Peshawar to try to abduct the Nazim (Mayor) of that locality, but luckily the people of the area along with the police were ready for them. In the ensuing gunfight, 9 of the bearded criminals were killed. Now from the Khyber Agency, Mangal Bagh (Tuesday Garden), their leader (a former bus conductor of the kind of little urchins that cling like sleazy lizards to psychedelic busses to collect fares from passengers), is threatening the populace of the village with dire consequences. He threatened that they would attack every house in the village, sparing only those that would flutter flags of Talibans. Till last news nobody had lifted the Talibs flag, because there are obviously extremely few supporters of these merciless thugs.

Clearly the time has come for the governmental forces, the police, army and all others, to rise up to the occasion and do the needful. It is the government’s duty towards its populace to provide protection to their life and limb. Time for pussy-footing is over. With precise targeted hitting, they need to get the populace rid of this menace that they created for them. If they fail to do so, they do so at their own peril (as posses and vigilantism are already being produced by the public for their own protection). These forces of darkness need to be smoked out like you smoke out the menace of vermin, and one by one you kill them.