A more surprising statement came from Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the leader of the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, who warned the national assembly: "If Taliban continue to move at this pace they will soon be knocking at the doors of Islamabad." ( It is similar to the competition for power among various shades of extremist Sikh and Akali groups in Indian Punjab in 1980s.)
"Everyone and his dog know this is not a military trained for counterinsurgency," said Mosharraf Zaidi, a political analyst. "People have been waiting for Pakistan's 9/11 moment," Zaidi added. "But this isn't America." "You can't possibly think the rest of the country, particularly the urban areas, is going to fall like a house of cards," Zaidi said. "Ultimately I think the country will overcome this. But it's going to get worse first." (He certainly is an optimist!)
According to reports Jihadist once associated with the Harkat-e-Jihad-i-Islami and the Lashkar-e-Taiba - groups with strong roots to terror acts in Kashmir after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, stayed neutral, only joining the Taliban's fight against foreign forces in Afghanistan in 2004, helping with training and logistics. During the Pakistani military's operations in the tribal areas over the past few years, they kept out of the fight. In the current critical phase of the "war on terror", for the first time these militants are fully operational and are turning their attention to operations inside Pakistan. The top military brains at General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, the garrison city twinned with the capital Islamabad, are acutely aware of what these highly trained and dedicated militants are capable of: they cut their teeth in operations inside India and in Kashmir.
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