CONTROVERSY has raged in recent days over whether the video of a 17-year-old girl being flogged by the Taliban, released last April, was real or staged. The initial news report published in an English-language daily alleged that Ethnomedia, the Islamabad-based NGO that released the video, paid a “local” half a million rupees to have the video produced.

The report also claimed that the girl shown in the video, which was so instrumental in galvanising public outcry against the Taliban, also received a payment of Rs100,000. The matter was even taken up by Pakistan’s Senate last month. In a debate held on the issue, Jamaat-i-Islami Senator Khursheed Ahmed demanded action against the NGO which he accused of having “defamed Islam and the nation”.

In response Interior Minister Rehman Malik, expressing grave concern over media reports of the matter, ordered an inquiry into whether or not the video was authentic. In the midst of the outcry Samar Minallah, the founder of Ethnomedia, wrote in defence of the video’s authenticity drawing attention to the fact that Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesperson Muslim Khan had publicly accepted responsibility for the video, admitting even that the case had not been properly investigated before the girl was punished. Ms Minallah reminded those questioning the authenticity of the video of the fact that videos entitled Swat I and Swat II, easily available in any marketplace in the region, showed the Taliban engaged in even more brutal acts such as beheadings and amputations.

Yet to view the controversy as an isolated case connected only to the veracity of the events depicted in the video would be to miss the trajectory of the transformation being planned for the Taliban by the political and military leadership of the country. With the completion of the Pakistan military’s Rah-i-Nijat offensive in Swat, and the near culmination of operations in North Waziristan, the endgame of a long and bloody counter-insurgency operation is now visible.

Such an endgame requires, arguably by necessity, the co-option of those among the enemy that have not been eliminated, into the inevitable ‘peace deal’ that will mark the end of hostilities and tempt with concessions those still left standing. The imperatives of the classic counter-insurgency doctrine thus dictate that the internal enemy, the Taliban, must be transformed into a friend.

The army’s strategic local objective is not the only factor dictating the reinvention of the Taliban that is under way via the Swat video controversy. Undoubtedly, the United States has been mulling over talks with the Taliban for the past several months with advisors close to President Obama emphasising their necessity as a solution to the AfPak crisis.

With the success of the Kayani-Qureshi pilgrimage to Washington DC, the delicious dreams of nuclear deals on par with India and the acknowledgment that peace between India and Pakistan is crucial to the success of the war in Afghanistan, the timing is ideal for the deployment of such an endgame. On March 11, the Los Angeles Times reported several US officials as saying that the Taliban in Pakistan were increasingly at odds with Al Qaeda militants in the area.

The distinction is notable because in distinguishing between the two, valued space is created for saying that the Taliban can indeed be rehabilitated and transformed into potential partners in peace – unlike Al Qaeda which must be eliminated at all costs. On the same day as the LA Times report was published, British Foreign Secretary David Milliband sounded the same note, emphasising in an interview the need for “political talks” with the Taliban as part of the ultimate solution to the region’s problems.

Unsurprisingly the same sentiment was echoed by Pakistani diplomatic sources four days later in a story published on March 14 in this newspaper. The sources, who refused to be identified, blamed the series of Lahore bombings on those Taliban that were “still allied to Al Qaeda militants”, echoing the American project of resuscitating some of the Taliban as possible partners in a post-war deal. Insisting that the reformed Taliban were refusing to assist Al Qaeda even in exchange for payment, the sources suggested that most of the hardcore fighters had either already been eliminated or would soon be, leaving behind those that could possibly be co-opted within a post-operation framework.

The project confronted by Pakistan’s military and civilian leaders, in exchange for the military and civilian goodies inveigled from Washington, is that of making the ‘good’ Taliban palatable to a Pakistani public ravaged by their brutality. Casting doubt on a video that mobilised so many against the Taliban is one tiny part of this larger strategy that necessitates delivering some sort of ‘victory’ to the United States before the commencement of its troops’ withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Minor hitches in this project of reinventing the Taliban include civil society groups and NGOs such as Ethnomedia, that draw attention to annoying details: to give just a few examples, the over 200 girls’ schools bombed, the scores of beheaded villagers, the blast-stricken markets and the many thousands of dead civilians that the Taliban have left in their wake. Accusing such NGOs of faking a video that showed an incident that was acknowledged by the TTP is thus a convenient way of rewriting history so that the enemies of the past may become the friends of the future.

In a country where the truth is ever slippery and the suffering of women always subjected to doubt, the controversy over the Swat flogging video merely illustrates the ramparts of the revised version of the Taliban era that is to be presented to the Pakistani public. In the calculations of the civilian-military leadership, undermining the tragedy of a few women is a meagre price to pay for the successful reincarnation of the Taliban as peace-loving allies who could soon become members of Pakistan’s legislatures.

The writer is a US-based attorney teaching constitutional history and political philosophy.

rafia.zakaria@gmail.com