Pakistan has repeatedly vowed action to stop militants, but analysts say denial and dithering and a seething resentment of the US among the Pakistani people have stymied effective policy.
Escalating violence by militants and the consolidation of their grip in some places, and infiltration into others, have raised fears about the spread of Taliban influence.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan falling under the sway of al-Qaeda-linked militants is a nightmare scenario for the US.
PHOTO: AP
“There’s a great sense of angst, a sense of unraveling,” said Adil Najam, professor of international relations at Boston University. “It seems that everyone has lost control, including the military, of where things are going. I don’t think they’ve given up the fight, it’s just they don’t seem to know what they can do.”
President Asif Ali Zardari secured more than US$5 billion in aid last Friday after telling allies and aid donors in Tokyo he would step up the fight against militants. The pledges pushed up a stock market that has gained 33 percent this year.
But elsewhere the mood is grim.
Audacious attacks by militants in the eastern city of Lahore and blasts elsewhere over recent weeks have sapped confidence. A suicide car-bomber killed 25 soldiers and police and two passers-by in the northwest on Saturday.
As well as across the northwest, the Taliban are infiltrating into Punjab Province and Karachi, analysts say. The release on bail of a cleric who used to run a radical Islamabad mosque has added to a feeling that the militants are on a roll.
Rumours of attacks on schools have spread panic and embassies have warned citizens of the danger of attacks and kidnapping. Members of Pakistan’s moderate Muslim majority say they feel intimidated by a vocal and aggressive minority.
Compounding the unease is a sense that the government has been distracted by political wrangling and is in denial.
“The general impression and perception at this stage is the government lacks the will to assert itself,” analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi told Dawn television.
Policy has been flip-flopping between inconclusive military offensives and peace deals that critics say embolden the militants.
The International Crisis Group think tank says responsibility for counter-insurgency has to be transferred to civilians from a military that continues to have links with some militant groups it sees as tools in its confrontation with India.
“It’s inept in the way it conducts operations, it suffers huge losses and then it signs peace deals, it appeases the militants,” said the group’s Pakistan director Samina Ahmed.
Under the latest peace pact, authorities have virtually handed over the northwestern Swat region to the Taliban to end violence. But the militants have already pushed out and taken over a new area 100km from the capital.
“The implications of appeasement are obvious,” Ahmed said. “Peace deals have been signed from a position of weakness and the militants have gained ground. It is quite frightening.”
Optimists had hoped the end of military rule with a general election last year would see public support coalescing around a strong stand against the militants.
But while the Taliban have been taking advantage of grievances against corrupt courts and greedy landlords to win support, they have also been able to capitalize on widespread resentment of the US exacerbated by its attacks on militants with missiles launched from pilotless drones.
“I’m not sure the drones have actually done anything to reduce militancy, but they have strengthened the Taliban argument more than any other thing,” Najam said. “The Taliban have cornered the anti-American message.”
Victory over the Taliban hinged on public opinion, he said.
“If ordinary Pakistanis can turn against the Taliban then we can win this. If they don’t, if they continue to be lukewarm because the Taliban are supposed to be anti-American and all that, then there’s no way you can win this,” he said. “The battle is in the hearts and minds of Pakistani society and I think we’re losing.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS