Yet the last time I checked, it was the Pakistani army and its Inter-Services Intelligence which had trained, armed, mentored and brainwashed these Taliban scum for use against infidel Western forces in neighbouring Afghanistan. 

Today, the Pakistani army and the ISI – and their children - are infidels?

If we step beyond the standard homilies like “As you sow, so you shall reap,” and references to Frankenstein's monster and rearing ‘snakes in your backyard' now being invoked gleefully by the “I told you so” brigade, some intriguing questions crop up.

And no, these do not include the assertions -by self-styled ‘strategic analysts' like Zahid Hamid (who has made career out of India baiting, blaming it for everything from earthquakes and locust attacks to his own chronic flatulence) and deluded degenerates like Hafiz Saeed- that India had a role in the school massacre. 

The first question, of course, is whether the incestuous love-hate relationship between the Pakistani military establishment and the Taliban has finally and truly ended. 

At least till June this year, Pakistan had conveniently divided the Taliban into good and bad, the former being those who struck at India and at western forces in Afghanistan, and the latter being those who attacked Pakistani interests. 

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan fell into a grey zone, mainly because it is impossible to clearly differentiate between the two.

The TTP has claimed responsibility for the suicide bomb attack in Lahore near the Wagah border checkpost on the India Pakistan border in early November, the botched attempt to bomb New York's Times Square in May 2010, the September 2008 truck bomb attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, and the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. 

So if a bunch of well-armed religious thugs see America and India as the enemy, and also conduct attacks within Pakistan, are they good or bad Talibs?

And then of course, there are the constantly shifting loyalties, with various factions selling out to the highest bidder or jostling for leadership by proving how many innocents they can maim and kill.

In early June 2014, peace talks with the outfit initiated by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif failed. On June 8, ten heavily armed TTP suicide bombers attacked Karachi's Jinnah International Airport, killing over 26 people before being taken down by security forces.

A week later, Pakistani forces launched Operation Zarb-e-Azb, loosely translated as Sword of the Prophet, aimed at clearing extremists in the Waziristan region.

The massive offensive, which included air strikes (read carpet bombing) as well as attacks by drones on suspected targets, has killed over 1, 500 militants over the past few months, and displaced thousands. But just when the military was boasting that the operation had ‘crippled' not just the Pakistani Taliban but also some other assorted Al Qaeda types sheltering in the area, Peshawar happened.

The operation even has an official Facebook page here, which, apart from gory pictures of the Peshawar massacre, has gems like: “We will take revenge form (sic) these butchers INSHALLAH. We know who these butchers are.We will not let them go anywhere. This time we will not take any prisoners.INSHALLAH!”

But does that mean that the Pakistani military has finally woken up to the fact that the only good Taliban is a dead one? 

More importantly, has it finally dawned on the army that using religious terror as an instrument of state policy can only lead to more such massacres of innocents?

A day after the Peshawar attack, Pakistan's Army chief, Gen Raheel Sharif reportedly tweeted: "Asked PM Nawaz Sharif to hang all terrorists. More than 3,000 terrorists should be hanged in next 48 hours." 

Rescinding a law banning the death penalty and stringing up a few jailed terrorists, while launching another major military offensive on known Taliban hideouts might make for good copy, but will that really work against brainwashed zombies who actually crave death as a reward?

Plain counter-terrorism operations would "amount to little more than fire-fighting unless there's an attempt to attack the ideological roots of militancy and societal reach of militants," said the Dawn, Pakistan's oldest English newspaper.

But that can only happen when scumbags like Hafiz Saeed and Lashkar-e-Taiba's commander Zaki-ur Rahman Lakhvi are among those strung up along with their porcine comrades in arms. 

 

 

src:sify.com