Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP),

May 13, 2009

The recent threats to young girls - be it outside Park Tower in Karachi, any place where the elite class studies in Lahore, works or hangs out in the urban centres of the country - that they should cover themselves completely and shun western dress, else their faces would be defaced beyond recognition point to the glaring fact that the religious bigots who call themselves "Taliban" are not only at our door steps, but are here to stay. In the meanwhile, the number of terrorism-related incidents in the country, where the prime targets are the personnel of various security agencies besides hundreds of innocent civilians, are increasing day by day. Where does all of this take us?

To answer this question, we must first analyse the primacy of these so-called Taliban, who are known by name of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and are lead by an ever-elusive Baitullah Mehsud. The common perception, which was recently reiterated after my discussion with an activist of a youth-based organisation that staged a protest demonstration in Lahore against the drone attacks, is that the group of Taliban led by Baitullah Mehsud is an outgrowth or a subsidiary of the Taliban fighting the American forces in Afghanistan, and is, therefore, an antithesis of America and its imperialistic policies in the region. On my suggestion that they should, after the successful demonstration against the drone attacks, stage a protest demonstration against TTP and the extremism spawn by it, the activist was of the view that since Taliban and America are each other's sworn enemies, a protest against Taliban would favour and please America and its agenda in the region, which their youth organisation wouldn't want.

This is where the whole problem lies; we haven't, as yet, been able to differentiate between what I call the "real" Taliban who solely focus on fighting the occupation forces in Afghanistan, and the "fake" Taliban, who are working on a hidden agenda of the United States and its ally, India, to disintegrate Pakistan. I call them fake, because it was during Musharraf's nine-year rule, whilst we considered ourselves an American ally, that the secret agencies of United States, India, Britain and Afghanistan established their hold throughout the length and breadth of Pakistan by setting up an extensive espionage network of their own, which recruited and subsequently released thousands of trained operatives garbed in the cloths of "Taliban" into the Pakistani territory.

This can be substantiated by the accounts of many journalists covering the war in the north western border of Pakistan, which suggest that the 25,000 strong fighters led by Baitullah Mehsud are not only highly trained but also have state-of-the-art weapons at their disposal. Now one wonders that where does the unabated supply of money and latest war gadgetry come from? These "Taliban" do not have the luxury of windfall revenues generated by the poppy cultivation, as their counterparts in Afghanistan do; neither could they be funded by the ISI, given the kind of havoc they are wreaking in Pakistan. Therefore, all the circumstantial evidence leads to the involvement of some hidden hands, which have their own axe to grind.
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