Dogma and intransigence, literalism and narrow-mindedness…these qualities we associate with the Taliban. So when from them is heard an appeal to reason, the language of inclusiveness and moderation, the shock is great. Is the sun rising from another direction?

In his Eid greetings to the Afghan people, Amir-ul-Momineen Mullah Omar talks of respecting the rights of others in Afghanistan, and creating an “inclusive government” after foreign troops withdraw next year. The Taliban will keep fighting the forces of occupation but they are also ready to enter into peace talks.
But the real shocker is this on education: “Modern education is a fundamental need of every society in the present time.” The pre-9/11 Taliban with their agenda of female segregation and social repression were easy to vilify, even demonise. But this new language, this softening of the old hard edges is dangerous stuff – for it makes them and their cause more attractive.
The Taliban were stern taskmasters when they ruled Afghanistan. But their past, and the excesses associated with it, are a receding memory, thanks to the American occupation. While the past is the past, the present is the occupation. And the Taliban have struggled against that, and the Americans, like numerous conquerors before, are on the point of leaving…ruing the fact that they ever entered Afghanistan in the first place.
What the Taliban lacked was flexibility and the capacity for shrewd judgement. But if Mullah Omar’s statement is anything to go by, they are now learning diplomacy, and perhaps even statesmanship. Lords of a medieval backwater in their remote beginnings but through struggle and praxis increasingly more sophisticated. The Taliban have much to thank the Americans for.
Good for them and good for Afghanistan, but we have a problem. The Pakistani Taliban, while not taking everyday orders from anyone in Kandahar, are spiritual kin to the Afghan Taliban. The turmoil in our northwest territories is an extension of the Afghan jihad. As recent events demonstrate, they are becoming bolder and their ambitions are soaring.
Anyone into present Afghan studies should read ‘An Enemy We Created’ by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn. Their principal conclusion is that Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were never one. The American attack, willy-nilly, threw them closer. Mullah Omar did not hand over Bin Laden to the Americans. But there was no shortage of Taliban leaders then who were unhappy with the burden Bin Laden was placing on them and on Afghanistan. Even now, in this Eid message, the Taliban are throwing broad hints that global jihad is no part of their agenda.
But the other conclusion of this book is that Mullah Omar, if he is alive, doesn’t seem anymore to be a hands-on leader, directing operations, etc. A new generation of young Taliban leaders, earning their spurs in this jihad, may have stepped to the fore. The same thing we see happening in Pakistan. Usman, the ex-medical orderly, who led the attack on General Headquarters; Adnan Rasheed, the junior tech from the air force, who was the explosives expert in the attempt on Musharraf’s life, who was freed from Bannu jail, and is the purported mastermind of the D I Khan jailbreak, to name only these two, represent a new dedicated cadre whose aim is the overthrow of the existing order in Pakistan.
Some of Adnan Rasheed’s videos are posted on the internet. He comes across as obviously intelligent and his English is very good and what he denounces is the ‘corrupt capitalist and democratic system’ in the country. Now it is easy to write off, and denounce, the Pakistani Taliban because of their unspeakable cruelty; their targeting of a girl like Malala Yousafzai; their throat-cutting; and their Shia-hatred. As long as these characteristics remain, for most Pakistanis the Taliban remain beyond the pale.
My fear arises from this new moderation that we see in Mullah Omar’s Eid message. If the thinking in it percolates down to the Pakistani Taliban and they stop their excesses against, say, Shias and the like, then the rest of the political philosophy their newest firebrands like Adnan Rasheed have begun to espouse can find more sympathisers in the broader folds of Pakistani society.
Now if this was a vibrant, vigorous state this would not matter. Radical fringes in other societies have been taken care of through action or the passage of time – the Baader-Meinhof gang, the Red Brigades, etc. Even wider insurgencies as in Algeria have been crushed by the military.
Pakistan is different. The Pakistani elites, the governing classes, are not only corrupt, they are also demoralised, the capacity of taking hard decisions drained from them. We’ve seen this any number of times: military bases under attack, the Taliban holding wide swathes of territory in the northwest, and government and military paralysed, unable to respond.
Everyone seems to be on the take. Zardari’s five years did what Gen Zia couldn’t do: discredit and destroy the Pakistan People’s Party. The incoming dispensation has promised newness even while being as old as the hills. Its chiefs declare that it will take three-to-four to solve the country’s most pressing problems, little realising that in that time-frame, with the Americans gone from Afghanistan and radical Islam on the march, geopolitics in this region will go God knows where.
A large country – almost 200 million souls by now – one of the world’s biggest armies, a nuclear power to boot, no end of tall talk, but no clue at all, not even the right words, how to meet the challenges on the horizon.
Other countries suffer from same degrees of corruption. The rest of the Muslim world is in much the same position. What distinguishes Pakistan and its problems is the curse of geography. The kind of terrain radical Islam has made its own, the hills and ravines of the northwest, and Afghanistan’s nearness, make this a unique place.
And all the talk of Islam engenders a great deal of hypocrisy. Only in theory are Data Ganj Baksh and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar the greatest saints of this land. In reality the leading saints of the republic as now evolved are real-estate tycoons (no names please) and cement magnates, and magnates of other enterprises too, who have every government in their pockets. The tales to be heard of these enterprising spirits would sound unbelievable in the Arabian Nights.
Other things being equal, even this would not matter. But times are bad and getting worse and IMF nostrums and difficult living conditions are making life tougher for wider sections of the population. In such a situation the appeal of Islamic radicalism grows, and when newer recruits speak of the bankruptcy of oligarchic democracy, more ready listeners they will find. This is the danger of the new moderation.
Pray to God then that the Taliban remain what we imagine them to be, prone to slaughter and the targeting of innocent girls. That way we are safe. The ruling classes will retain their various alibis. And there will be not much need of drastic action.
But war and struggle can change a lot of things. The Mullah Omar of this Eid message does not sound like the Mullah Omar of pre-9/11. If the Pakistani Taliban bring their understanding of things at par with their understanding of war, then we are in for grim times. And when the going gets tough have no fear, the governing classes will perform a vanishing act smooth enough to leave the Lucky Irani Circus amazed.
Email: winlust@yahoo.com

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