A nuclear Talibanistan?

Our view of Pakistan's role in the Afghanistan war has undergone an ominous but necessary series of shifts. At the outset of the war in October 2001, Pakistan correctly was seen as a necessary ally - both politically and geographically - as the primary conduit for our entry and lines of communication into Afghanistan.
Over the years, we came to understand that Pakistan's intelligence service was playing a double game - helping us, but also supporting the Taliban, while Pakistan's northern area had become a safe haven for both the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Thus, Pakistan came to be seen as part of the problem that the Obama administration reasonably has taken to calling the “AfPak” war. Gen. David H. Petraeus told a Senate committee that he saw Pakistan and Afghanistan as “a single theater.”
Now another perception shift is starting to take hold: The increasing instability of the Pakistani government makes Pakistan - more than Afghanistan - the central challenge of our AfPak policy.
Last week, David Kilcullen, a former Australian army officer who was Gen. Petraeus' senior counterinsurgency strategist and is now a consultant to the Obama White House, said Pakistan could collapse within months.
“We have to face the fact that if Pakistan collapses, it will dwarf anything we have seen so far in whatever we're calling the war on terror now,” he said.
Mr. Kilcullen said time was running out for international efforts to pull both countries back from the brink. “You just can't say that you're not going to worry about al Qaeda taking control of Pakistan and its nukes ... the Kabul tail was wagging the dog,” he said.
Afghanistan was a campaign to defend a reconstruction program. “It's not really about al Qaeda. Afghanistan doesn't worry me. Pakistan does,” Mr. Kilcullen said. He said maybe we can manage Afghanistan and Richard Holbrooke can cut an international deal, but there is also a chance that Washington will fail to stabilize Afghanistan, Pakistan will collapse and al Qaeda will end up running what he called “Talibanistan.”
“This is not acceptable. You can't have al Qaeda in control of Pakistan's missiles,” he said.
“It's too early to tell which way it will go. We'll start to know about July. That's the peak fighting season ... and a month from the Afghan presidential election.”
Gen. Petraeus himself recently said that “extremists ... pose a truly existential threat to [Pakistan].”
The radical Islamist threat to the already weak and unstable Pakistani government has become acute because of reconciliation of former adversaries: Mullah Omar (leader of the Taliban fighters who have left Afghanistan for their new stronghold in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's Baluchistan province) and Baitullah Mehsud (leader of the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan) .
According to last week's Der Speigel, “In late February, flyers written in Urdu turned up in the Pakistani-Afghan border region announcing the formation of a new platform for jihad. The Shura Ittihad-ul Mujahideen (SIM), or Council of United Holy Warriors, declared that the alliance of all militants had been formed at the request of Mullah Omar and [Osama] bin Laden.
”There is a new quality to this .... These groups are now the Pakistani face of al Qaeda,” the German newsmagazine reported.
The problem is that the united radical Islamists are expanding the combat zone inside Pakistan, threatening the state itself. Our drone attacks on the united Taliban (and al Qaeda) are driving the radicals deeper into Pakistan, including its major cities. Also, the attacks inevitably also kill Pakistani women and children (or are claimed by the radicals to have done so), which serves as a recruiting tool for new jihadists.
Thus Mr. Kilcullen was quoted by Der Speigel: “I am against the drone attacks. Even if we could kill half of the al Qaeda leaders, what does it help us if we cause an uprising by the population of Pakistan?”
Mr. Kilcullen's quote raises the strong inference that because the Obama administration has increased the George W. Bush administration's level of drone attacks into Pakistan and Gen. Petraeus' top counterinsurgency adviser publicly opposes the attacks, there must be a major policy fight going on within the administration.
Military strategy disputes are understandable. We have no good choices. Because of the overstretched condition of our military, we have too few troops available to deal with Pakistan, which itself has an active and reserve military manpower of 1.4 million.
Yet Pakistan's military seems insufficient to deal with the radical Islamists. After the Taliban took over the Swat Valley in the middle of Pakistan, seized an emerald mine to help finance their war with America and Pakistan, and established Shariah law, the Pakistani government was so weak it accepted a cease-fire with Maulana Fazlullah, a local thug and terrorist.
With our own Army too small, our NATO allies unwilling to help and Gen. Petraeus' senior counterinsurgency adviser worried that the Taliban and al Qaeda may be able to take over nuclear Pakistan, we are left with a policy of temporizing and crossing our fingers.
Tony Blankley is the author of “American Grit: What It Will Take to Survive and Win in the 21st Century” and vice president of the Edelman public relations firm in Washington.

Talibanization of INDIA ?

Muslim organisations are up in arms over an alleged comment on Monday by a Supreme Court judge, who reportedly cited "Talibanisation" while turning down a Muslim student's plea to sport a beard in school. Now, the debate over the Muslim beard -- commonly considered an Islamic virtue rather than an immutable tenet - has come full circle.

The Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, a Muslim mass organisation, filed a broader case last month in the highest court, angling for a far-reaching ruling to allow Muslims to keep beards unconditionally, like Sikhs. The Jamiat case is likely to be one of the most fascinating courtroom duels over an Islamic emblem outside the Muslim world.

Here's why. It is not often that an Indian civil case rests largely on the validity of anecdotes from the Islamic world.

Evidence in support of the beard ranges from 1,000-year-old Islamic injunctions from the Hadith (Prophetic traditions) to the Hukum ul Islam, a famous treatise in Arabic. The English translation was specially procured from London's Dar At-Tawheed Publications.

"Our contention is that it is essential for Muslims to keep a beard in the light of the texts and traditions," Anis Suhrawardy, the lawyer representing Jamiat leader Arshad Madani said. Just in case the court rules in favour of the Jamiat, India could become the first non-Muslim country to uphold the Muslim's unfettered right to sport a beard.

Few Muslims think that keeping a beard could amount to supporting the Taliban's extremist character. "I don't dispute a particular judgement but if keeping a beard is akin to being a Taliban, I am proud to be one," Jamiat leader Mahmood Madani told HT. Two previous cases over a right to keep a beard, both involving employees in the armed forces, prompted the special leave petition filed by the Jamiat.

In defence organisations, a person is allowed a beard if it was sported on joining service. Most Muslims agree that the beard has great religious significance but it is commonly treated as non-essential.

Swat valley: transition from Buddha to Radio Mullah

Celebrated in the Hindu scriptures as 'udyan' (garden), it's a stunningly picturesque place where the Buddha once walked, cultures intersected, poets sang and mystics came in search of peace. But, sadly, Swat valley in northwest Pakistan has now become synonymous with unrest, bloodshed and Talibanisation.
Not many know that the Swat valley, which is in the news now for the local government's much-criticised peace deal that allows the Taliban to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, in return for surrendering arms, has an unbroken history of over 2,000 years that has seen many religions and civilisations come and go.
'The Swat river is mentioned in the Rig Veda as Suvashtu which literally means the river on which settlements can be made,' Kumkum Roy, professor of ancient Indian history at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the author of 'Historical Dictionary of Ancient India', told IANS.
'Kushan rulers also had connections with the Swat valley,' she said.
Centuries later, the scenic river, which flows from the majestic Hindukush mountains into the Kabul river in the Peshawar valley, is a magnet for Pakistani tourists who love to flaunt the Swat valley as the Switzerland of Pakistan.
Some historical accounts also mention that in 327 BC Alexander the Great crossed the Swat river with part of his army and before going south to conquer the locals at what are now Barikoot and Odegram.
The region has also played host to a succession of dynasties like the Mauryans, the Indo-Greeks, the Indo-Syphians, the Kushans, the Turk-Shahis and the Hindu-Shahis down the ages before the invasion by Mahmud of Ghazni who brought Islam to the valley in the 11th century.
Buddhism thrived in the region that was once the centre of the Gandhara civilisation. The Swat museum has the footprints of the Buddha, who, as legend has it, came to Swat during his last reincarnation as the Gautama Buddha.
Statues of the Buddha, stupas, monasteries, rock carvings, art, coins, pottery and other artefacts can be found everywhere in the valley. Emperor Ashoka is also said to have ordered the erection of a stupa in the region.
In 403 AD, the famous Chinese pilgrim, Fa-Hien, counted 6,000 monasteries in the valley. Two centuries later, Hsuan Tsang, another itinerant monk, saw around 1,400 monasteries.
This splendid multi-layered heritage now stands imperilled with a resurgent Taliban determined to impose its austere version of the ideal Islamic society based on Sharia that has no place for music or other niceties of life and scorns sending girls to school.
Although the restive Swat valley has been known for anarchy and lawlessness for some time, the process of Talibanisation started acquiring a sinister ring in July 2006 when Maulana Fazlullah, a firebrand cleric-turned Taliban ideologue and commander, started broadcasting his Wahhabi interpretation of the Quran and preaching extremist messages to people in the valley.
'Radio Mullah', as he came to be known, soon became a local legend and acquired an army of volunteers who pillaged and burnt girls' schools, CD shops, the famous ski resort and Buddha statues to turn his dream of installing an Islamic emirate into reality.
Not surprisingly, much after their ideological fellow travellers across the border in Afghanistan who brutally destroyed the famous Buddha statues in Bamiyan, they have also turned their ire on what they consider remnants of an infidel culture.
Nearly one and a half years ago, Fazlullah's informal army defaced a 23-foot-high, 7th century Meditating Buddha, carved in a rock in the lap of a mountain in Jehandabad village, in Swat, triggering protests among conservationists and Buddhists all over the world.
Things can only get worse with the Islamabad-backed provincial government striking a deal with the local Taliban represented by Sufi Muhammad, the father-in-law of 'FM Mullah.'