This is something that even a taxi driver, when I got back to New York -- he was from Pakistan and we were talking about the Taliban during a ride from Penn station to the hotel -- said. He said the same thing that he knows that this Taliban is not the real Taliban, but that the government is making up stories. There is such a sense of denial among the population at this moment that this Taliban is all a myth.
I believe the real situation indicates something else.
Oh, of course. The Taliban are getting definitely stronger in the tribal areas.
You spent a long time in Baluchistan and the NWFP. You have mentioned that there are Islamists who want to capture power through a democratic way. The next generation Taliban also have the same objective. Right?
I think their political aims are quite close. I think the political objectives of Maulana Fazlur Rehman (the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam chief) and his crew and the political objectives of the Taliban are not all that different... Right now I think there is a difference of opinion (as to) how to reach that goal more than the goal (which is) the Islamist State.
If the goal is the same and they are trying to achieve these in different ways, how do you think it would impact the State and Pakistani society?
Let us look at the impact the MMA (Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal) government had in the NWFP from 2002 until today. When the MMA was elected, Western critics, even Pakistani critics, said this was going to be the signal of the beginning of the Talibanisation of the NWFP.
Over the past six months as I travelled these areas and continued to ask people whether they were planning to go for the MMA again -- the province had been Talibanised in many ways -- yet people said they won't go for the MMA because they promised to implement the Sharia, but they did not.
Most of the people who voted for the MMA, would now vote for the Awami National Party, but there also is a proprotion of people who would support the Taliban because they think the only way to achieve their goal of the Sharia is through non-parliamentary means, or armed struggle.
As an adjoinder to that the MMA government created a sort of social space if you will, that allowed the Taliban and the militants to expand their power because the MMA could not afford politically (not to do that) after campaigning on slogans of being pro-Taliban and pro-Sharia.
How could the MMA go before the people who had voted for it and say they were going to sanction the army to go to Swat. They simply could not do it. If they did, they would have the last chance of getting any vote in this election. That is the role they had. The political parties in some ways (have acted) like sort of fronts, kind of political fronts for them. I am not suggesting that the Taliban is kind of lined up behind them, but the JUI, because of its legitimacy, creates this sort of social space that allows these groups to grow faster.
Image: Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam activists march against a military operation in the northwestern Swat valley in Peshawar in November 2007. Photograph: Tariq Mahmood/AFP/Getty Images
Also read: The case of Musharraf and the drunk uncle
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