Perhaps the time has come for all rational moderates of the country to unite around the conviction that there is no difference between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban; if one is bad the other can never be good
The repeated terror attacks in the country bear testimony to the fact that the country’s anti terror policy is failing to deliver. There is no gainsaying that the popular support for the Taliban is waning, if not in the Pashtun areas then at least in the rest of the country. Meanwhile the Taliban are learning quickly from the tactics of other terror groups like al Qaeda and its umpteen other regional counterparts. Some may call their recent tactics desperate acts of a failing force but the fact remains that this army of darkness has uncountable levers to manipulate the war in a country given to countless ideational contradictions and perpetual insecurity.
With this, undoubtedly, the myth that there is in essence a difference between al Qaeda and the Taliban has come crashing down. If there was any difference between the Taliban’s medieval tribalism and al Qaeda’s fanatical globalism before 9/11, it is no more visible. But what should be done with the people who not only insist on distinguishing the two, but also protest at the Pakistani Taliban being called Taliban at all. Being the eternal proponents of conspiracy theories, these Platos believe that the elements wreaking havoc in the country in the name of Talibanisation are nothing but a ragtag army of foreign funded thugs introduced to weaken the nation’s moorings, whereas the real Taliban, the Afghan Taliban, is good. Ironically while these ideational pundits go to unnecessary pains to distinguish the two, they do not even support the operation against the Pakistani Taliban and are often found in either hunger strike camps or on television screens shedding tears for the affected.
