Talibondage

The Islamic State’s actions in Syria and Iraq are grabbing the headlines. And despite numerous efforts to get at least some world focus on the Palestinian issue (particularly the Gaza Hamas militants), demanding why the UN General Assembly is quick to condemn Israeli “excesses” yet failing to demand much of anything from the Palestinians, Israel’s entreaties seem to be falling on deaf ears, resonating solely with the global Jewish diaspora and its most staunch supporters. Likewise, the devolution of Pakistan itself – today the victim of decades of tolerance of if not outright support for Islamic extremists – seems like a sideshow when compared to the grisly IS beheadings or terrorist attacks in the West (like the recent hostage scene in Sydney, Australia).

Pakistan is a particular mess, exacerbated by our military actions in Afghanistan. As a result, combat-hardened Taliban irregulars, trained in the battle against NATO forces, are not only having their way against the incumbent Afghan government in Kabul, they are assaulting Pakistani troops sent into the Western Tribal districts – the untamed and seemingly ungovernable “wild wild West” of Pakistan to control their growing power and to limit Taliban assaults that are now popping up all over Pakistan, far from those ungovernable tribal areas – to defuse their power over both the region and in various sectors of Pakistan. What makes Pakistan of exceptional importance to Western policy-makers is the fact that it holds what many fear is in excess of 100 viable nuclear warheads and the capacity to deliver them to regional targets.

It’s bad enough that Pakistani nuclear experts, most notably the father of the “Islamic Bomb” Dr. A.Q. Khan, have previously handed over nuclear weapons manufacturing skills to North Korea and fission-making centrifuge technology to Iran, but a collapse of Pakistan itself could make that entire nuclear arsenal available to the Taliban and their Sunni extremist allies all over the world… possibly including al Qaeda and the Islamic State. This is really serious stuff, but the instability of a mega-corrupt, elitist (albeit elected) government in Islamabad, a military and its intelligence (ISI) counterpart with mixed allegiance to both Pakistan as well as militants at every level throughout the country and a Taliban malignancy willing to do almost anything to dethrone the incumbents in power makes for one of the most dangerous and volatile mixes on earth.

Exactly how powerful and extreme are these Taliban operatives, now with forces scattered throughout Pakistan? Try this little event on for size. “During an eight-hour rampage at the Army Public School and Degree College, a team of nine Taliban gunmen stormed through the corridors and assembly hall, firing at random and throwing grenades. Some of the 1,100 students at the school were lined up and slaughtered with shots to the head. Others were gunned down as they cowered under their desks, or forced to watch as their teachers were riddled with bullets.” New York Times, December 16^th.

“The unprecedented slaughter [December 16^th] of more than 125 people [now estimated at over 148 deaths, 132 of them young students in school uniforms], most of them children, at a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, shows in the most gruesome possible way that the Pakistani Taliban known as the TTP have not yet been defeated or brought under control by the Pakistani military’s recent offensives. Certainly that was the objective of the attack: the school is a private one run by the army for the children of soldiers.” Sami Yousafzai, writing for The Daily Beast, December 16^th.

Yousafzai contacted TPP’s commander, Jihad Yar Wazir, and got the following explanation for the atrocity, calling the action “fitting retribution”: “ ‘The parents of the army school are army soldiers and they are behind the massive killing of our kids and indiscriminate bombing in North and South Waziristan. [Part of the Tribal District, the TTP strongholds] To hurt them at their safe haven and homes—such an attack is perfect revenge.’… But the children are innocents, [Yousafzai] said. What about them, [Yousafzai] asked?

“‘What about our kids and children,’ [Wazir] said. ‘These are the kids of the U.S.-backed Pakistani army and they should stop their parents from bombing our families and children.’ Yar Wazir went on: ‘Those kids are innocent because they are wearing a suit and tie and western shirts? But our kids wearing Islamic shalwar kamiz do not come before the eyes of the media and the west.’

“Jihad Yar Wazir says the TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban) has a long list of attacks that it will carry out in Pakistan against the security forces whose efforts to crush the group are supported by the United States. The regions where it is strong have served as a refuge for Al Qaeda, which is the main American target.” The Daily Beast. These same Taliban (and their cousins) are reveling in the defeat – through patience and unending chipping away at the “elected” Kabul government and its NATO supporting troops – of Western power and influence in Afghanistan. They are watching Muslim extremists having their way all over the region and are beginning to believe that crushing Pakistan itself is an achievable goal.

Pakistan was stunned and outraged at this bloody assault, after decades of coddling and even encouraging Islamists, including fostering the right-wing religious schools – madrasa – that have spawned terrorist recruitment, given fundamentalists power on college campuses, allowed its ISI to filter vital information to militants and literally looking the other way as killer Islamists operated freely well-beyond their northwestern tribal enclaves. Reaction was swift.

“Pakistani warplanes and ground forces killed at least 77 militants in a northwestern tribal region near the Afghan border, officials said [December 19^th], days after Taliban fighters killed 148 people - most of them children - in a school massacre… Meanwhile, a Pakistani prosecutor said the government will try to cancel the bail granted to the main suspect in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks - a decision that outraged neighboring India and called into question Pakistan's commitment to fighting militancy.

“The violence at a school in Pakistan's northwest [on December 16^th] stunned the country and brought cries for retribution. In the wake of the mass killing the military has struck targets in the Khyber tribal region and approved the death penalty for six convicted terrorists.

“The military said its ground forces [December 18^th] killed 10 militants while airstrikes killed another 17, including an Uzbek commander. Another 32 alleged terrorists were killed by security forces in an ambush in Tirah valley in Khyber on [December 18^th] as they headed toward the Afghan border, the military said.” AOL.com, December 19^th.

But the Islamist infrastructure is deeply imbedded in Pakistan and exceptionally difficult to root out. And except for an occasional outrage (think of the Taliban bullet fired into the head of teenaged-activist Malala Yousafzai back in 2012), there is way too much sympathy at every level of Pakistan for religious extremism. When the outrage passes, what will Pakistan do to press this battle? What exactly is the government’s commitment against such extremists who seek to topple an elected but deeply corrupt regime?

If Pakistan cannot subdue these horrific militants, if its military’s efforts continue to fall short, the risk to the rest of the world of loosing these nukes into hands of even greater extremists, with a strong desire to punish the West and any regime that sides with the West, particularly the United States, is deeply unacceptable. The legacy of American “swatting at the myriad nests of angry wasps” in the Islamic world is beginning to provide that long-term blowback we have always feared. But now, our failure to contain this cancerous growth threatens the entire civilized world.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and as much as the Cold War defined the latter half of the twentieth century, the explosion of angry religious fundamentalists who believe that they are doing God’s work seems to have defined the beginnings of the twenty-first century.