I just think that sensationalism sells in the newspaper business. So nuances (in newspaper reporting) often times are taken out because of the complicated nature of the story... Nuances are the first ones to go in a newspaper story.

The (Western) journalists, who are there writing, are in many cases very smart and know that the society is a dynamic and complex one, but by the time it has gone to the editorial (department) in the US, by the time it is published and by the time the readers pick it up, that image of Pakistan is in many ways very dumbed down, or is a very one-dimensional picture.

I think you mentioned at the Asia Society discussion the other day that not many people support, whether in Baluchistan or the NWFP, what you call the neo Taliban or the next-generation Taliban. Is that a correct impression?

I think there is not an overwhelming support but there still remains (support)... Let me say this. It is very interesting. This was six or nine months after I had arrived in Pakistan. I met a senior journalist and we were talking about public support for the Taliban and he said that 99 per cent of the population supports the Taliban fighting the Americans in Waziristan, fighting the Pakistani army in tribal areas, but zero percent of the Pakistanis would allow the Taliban to come to cities like Lahore, Karachi or Islamabad.

It shows something that I was trying to mention at the Asia Society that Pakistan's support for the Taliban in Afghanistan in many ways stem as much from their belief that the Taliban represents Pakistan's interests in Kabul as much as it did that they saw, that they really looked out to the Taliban as being this great people. That same thing is holding true, I think, for the average Pakistanis support for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

But when it comes to Pakistan, they continue to believe that the Taliban is a fiction that has been created by President Musharraf to continue his regime and to continue to get support from the US that has been out to throw out the Taliban throughout the Musharraf regime. That is why they think that Musharraf is manufacturing this threat.

Image: Tribal leaders from North Waziristan meet with Pakistan army officers in Miran Shah on February 17, 2007. The Pakistani military and tribal elders had signed a peace deal in 2006 to end fighting between Taliban and Pakistani forces, as well as stopping cross-border attacks into Afghanistan. That agreement came apart with the increasing Talibanisation of the NWFP. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

Also read: Is this Musharraf's worst crisis yet?

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