Pakistan's future is uncertain. But a few things can be said with something approaching certainty about what will not happen. The country will not break up; there will not be another military coup; the Taliban will not seize the presidency; Pakistan's nuclear weapons will not go astray; and the Islamic sharia will not become the law of the land.

Pervez Hoodbhoy is professor of nuclear and high-energy physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan

This is an edited version of an article published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (June 2009)

Also by Pervez Hoodbhoy on openDemocracy:

"Bizarre new world" (17 September 2001)

"Were we hijacked on 9/11?" (10 September 2002)

"Pakistan: inside the nuclear closet" (3 March 2004)

"The nuclear complex: America, the bomb, and Osama bin Laden" (16 February 2006) - with Zia Mian

"Barack Obama's triple test" (21 January 2009)That's the good news. It conflicts with opinions in the establishment media in some western countries, as well as with some in the Barack Obama administration. David Kilcullen, a top adviser to General David Petraeus, said in March 2009 that state collapse could occur within six months. This was and remains highly improbable.

Now, the bad news: the clouds over the future of Pakistan's state and society are getting darker. The speed of social decline has accelerated, surprising even many who have long warned that religious extremism is devouring the country.

The path to Islamabad

Here is how it happened. The United States invasion of Afghanistan devastated the Taliban. Many fighters were products of madrasas in Pakistan, and their trauma was in part shared by their erstwhile benefactors in Pakistan's military and intelligence. The army, recognising that this force would remain important for maintaining Pakistani influence in Afghanistan - and to keep the low-intensity war in Kashmir going - secretly welcomed them onto Pakistani soil. The process of rebuilding and rearming was quick, especially as after initial success the US campaign in Afghanistan went awry. The then president Pervez Musharraf's strategy of playing both sides against each other worked for a time. But Washington's demands to dump the Taliban became more insistent, and the Taliban also grew angry at this double-game. As the army's goals and tactics lost coherence, the Taliban advanced.

In 2007, the movement of Pakistani Taliban - Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) - formally announced its existence. The movement's blitzkrieg of merciless beheadings of soldiers and suicide-bombings drove out the army from much of the frontier province. By early 2009, it held about 10% of Pakistan's territory.

Even then, few Pakistanis saw the Taliban as the enemy. There were even many apologists for the Taliban, for example among opinion-forming local TV anchors that whitewashed their atrocities and and insisted that they shouldn't be resisted by force. Others supported them as fighters against US imperial might. The government, beset by ideological confusion and with no effective  propaganda response, had no cogent response to the claim that Pakistan was made for Islam and that the Taliban were Islamic fighters.

An immense price was paid for the government's prevarication. A cowardly state allowed fanatics to devastate hitherto peaceful Swat, once an idyllic tourist-friendly valley. Citizens were deprived of their fundamental rights. Women were lashed in public, hundreds of girls' schools were blown up, non-Muslims had to pay a special tax (jizya), and every form of art and music was forbidden. Policemen deserted en masse, and institutions of the state crumbled. The Taliban, thrilled by their success, violated the Nizam-e-Adl regulation in April 2009 only days after it was negotiated. They quickly moved to capture more territory in the adjacent area of Buner - barely 120 kilometres from Islamabad. The movement's spokesman, Muslim Khan, boasted that the capital would be captured soon. The army and government still dithered, while the public remained largely opposed to the use of military force.

Among openDemocracy's many articles on Pakistan:

Ehsan Masood, "Pakistan: the army as the state" (12 April 2007)

Ayesha Siddiqa, "Pakistan's permanent crisis" (15 May 2007)

Anatol Lieven, "At the Red Mosque in Islamadad" (4 June 2007)

Maruf Khwaja, "The war for Pakistan" (24 July 2007)

Saskia Sassen, "Lahore: urban space, niche repression" (21 November 2007)

Ayesha Siddiqa, "Pakistan after Benazir Bhutto" (28 December 2007)

Fred Halliday, "The assassin's age: Pakistan in the world" (28 December 2007)

Maruf Khwaja, "Pakistan: dynasty vs democracy" (9 January 2008)

Irfan Husain, "Pakistan's judgment day" (22 February 2008)

Irfan Husain. "Pervez Musharraf: the commando who couldn't" (19 August 2008)

Paul Rogers, "Pakistan: the new frontline" (18 September 2008)

Shaun Gregory, "The Pakistan army and the Afghanistan war" (25 November 2008)

Shaun Gregory, "Mumbai: Pakistan's moment of opportunity" (3 December 2008)

Paul Rogers, "The AfPak war: three options" (25 February 2009)

Paul Rogers, "A three-front war: Iraq, AfPak...Washington" (20 March 2009)

Nadeem Ul Haque, "How to solve Pakistan's problem" (24 April 2009)

Paul Rogers, "Pakistan: sources of turmoil" (30 April 2009)

Anatol Lieven, "Pakistan's American problem" (6 May 2009)

Shaun Gregory, "Pakistan and the ‘AfPak' strategy" (28 May 2008) At this point, a miracle of sorts happened. Sufi Mohammed, the illiterate and aging leader of the Swat sharia movement, lost his good sense to excessive exuberance. While addressing a huge victory rally in early May, he declared that democracy and Islam were incompatible; rejected Pakistan's Islamic constitution and courts; and accused Pakistan's fanatically right-wing Islamic parties of mild heresy. Mohammed's comments - even for a Pakistani public enamoured by the call to sharia - were a bit too much. The army, now with public support for the first time since the birth of the insurgency, finally mustered the will to fight.

The Taliban's game

Today, that fight is on. A major displacement of population, estimated at 3 million, is in process. This tragedy could have been avoided if the army hadn't nurtured extremists earlier. For the moment, the Taliban are retreating - and even being assailed by local tribesmen in parts of the Upper Dir district. But it will be a long haul to eliminate them from the complex mountainous terrain of Swat and Malakand. To wrest North and South Waziristan from their grasp will cost even more. Army actions in the tribal areas, and retaliatory suicide-bombings by the Taliban in the cities, are likely to extend into the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, the cancerous offshoots of extremist ideology continue to spread. Another TTP has established itself - Tehrik-e-Taliban Punjab. That could mean major conflict eventually shifting from Pakistan's tribal peripheries to the heartland: southern Punjab. Indeed, the Punjabi Taliban are busy increasing their operations, including an attack on the police and intelligence headquarters in Lahore on 27 May.

What exactly do the Pakistani Taliban want? They share with their Afghan counterparts the goal of fighting the United States. But still more important is the wish to replace secular and traditional law and customs in Pakistan's tribal areas with their version of the sharia. The logic of this aim (shared with religious political parties such as Jamaat-e-Islami) is a total transformation of society. It entails the elimination of music, art, entertainment, and all manifestations of modernity and westernism. The accessory goals include destroying the Shi'a - whom the Sunni Taliban regard as heretics - and expelling the few surviving native Christians, Sikhs, and Hindus from the frontier province. While extremist leaders such as Baitullah Mehsud and Maulana Fazlullah derive support from excluded social groups, they don't demand employment, land-reform, better healthcare, or more social services. This isn't a liberation movement by a long shot, although some marginalised Pakistani leftists embrace this delusion.

It is impossible for tribal insurgents to overrun Islamabad and Pakistan's main cities, which are protected by thousands of heavily armed military and paramilitary troops. But rogue elements within the military and intelligence agencies have instigated or organised suicide-attacks against their own colleagues. Now, dazed by the brutality of these attacks, the officer-corps appears at last to be moving away from its earlier sympathy and support for extremism. This makes a seizure of the nuclear arsenal improbable. But Pakistan's "urban Taliban", rather than illiterate tribal fighters, do pose a nuclear risk. There are indeed more than a few scientists and engineers in the nuclear establishment with extreme religious views.

While they aspire to state power, the Taliban have been able to achieve considerable success without it. Through terror tactics and suicide-bombings they have made fear ubiquitous. Women are being forced into burqas, and anxious private employers and government departments have advised their male employees in Peshawar and other cities to wear shalwar-kameez rather than trousers. Co-educational schools across Pakistan are increasingly fearful of attacks; some are converting to girls-only or boys-only schools. Video-shops are going out of business, and native musicians and dancers have fled or changed their profession. A sterile Saudi-style Wahhabism is beginning to impact upon Pakistan's once-vibrant culture and society.

It could be far worse. If, for example, General Ashfaq Kayani were overthrown in a coup by radical Islamist officers who seize control of the country's nuclear weapons, making intervention by outside forces impossible; and if jihad for liberating Kashmir is subsequently declared as Pakistan's highest priority and earlier policies for crossing the "line of control" (LoC) are revived; if Shi'a are expelled to Iran, and Hindus forced into India; if ethnic and religious minorities in the northern areas flee Pashtun invaders; if anti-Taliban forces such as the ethnic Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Baluch (Baloch) nationalists are decisively crushed by Islamists; and if sharia is declared across the country. All this still seems improbable - as long as the army stays together.

The way forward

What can the United States, which is still the world's pre-eminent power, do to turn the situation around? Amazingly little.

In spite of being on US life-support, Pakistan is probably the most anti-American country in the world. It has a long litany of grievances. Some are pan-Islamic, but others derive from its bitter experiences of being a US ally in the 1980s. Pakistan, once at the cutting-edge of the US-organised jihad against the Soviet Union, was dumped once the war was over and left to deal with numerous toxic consequences.

The festering resentments in Pakistan produced a paranoid mindset that blames Washington for all of Pakistan's ills - old and new. A meeting of young people that I addressed in Islamabad recently included many who thought that the Taliban are composed of US agents paid to create instability so that Pakistan's nuclear weapons could be seized by Washington. Other such absurd conspiracy theories also enjoy huge currency.

Nevertheless, the United States isn't powerless. The chances of engaging with Pakistan positively have improved under the Barack Obama administration. Any real progress toward a Palestinian state and dealing with Muslims globally would have enormous resonance in Pakistan. The US president's speech in Cairo on 4 June 2009, announcing a "new beginning" with the Muslim world, is a promising step in this regard.

Pakistan's financial support must not be cut, or economic collapse (and certain Taliban victory) would follow in a matter of months. The government and army must be kept afloat until Pakistan is fully ready to take on extremism by itself (although better financial monitoring is needed). The United States also should initiate a conference that brings Iran, India, and China together. Each of these countries must recognise that extremism represents a regional as well as global danger, and they must formulate an action-plan aimed at squeezing the extremists.

Pakistan's political leadership and army have a key responsibility in all this. They must face the extremist threat, accept the United States and India as partners rather than adversaries, enact major reforms in income and land distribution, revamp the education and legal systems, and address the real needs of citizens. Most important, Pakistan will have to clamp down on the fiery mullahs who spout hatred from mosques, and stop suicide-bomber production in madrasas. For better or for worse, it will be for Pakistanis alone to figure out how.

Barack Obama has moved quickly to fulfill his pre-election promises regarding Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Obama administration has already re-focused significant attention on the region, demonstrating a serious desire to undo the mess in "AfPak" created by George W. Bush.

Such serious intent was demonstrated by the international conference held in The Hague on 31 March under the aegis of the United Nations, was attended by foreign ministers and senior diplomats from more than 75 countries.

The US secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, who played a key role in organising the Hague conference, said that the Obama administration has also stopped using the infamous and counter-productive appellation, "the war on terror", opting for the far more technical "overseas contingency operations".

The softening of the rhetorical hard-edges of US policy have been accompanied by real policies as well. The US has committed $40 million out of an estimated $100 million for elections in Afghanistan in August 2009. This money is designated to cover the cost of ballot boxes and the counting of votes. More money will be allocated to cover the other costs of the election. Jamal Kidwai is Director of the AMAN Trust in India

Policy-makers have also turned to Pakistan, which will receive $3 billion and $7.5 billion of military and economic aid respectively over the next five years, with the condition that this money is not diverted to terrorists indulging in anti-India activities. This condition has been formalised by Congress' approval of the Pakistan Enduring Assistance and Cooperation Enhancement (PEACE) Act. Central to these moves is the recognition that the establishment of democracy in Afghanistan and Pakistan is necessary to defeat terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism in the region.

Broadening the lens

For the first time, too, Iran has been accepted as a partner for establishing peace and security in the region. Iran is now recognised, along with Afghanistan, as a victim of the narcotics economy. Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has been a great source of funding for the Taliban, facilitating the acquisition of weapons, while Iran struggles with high levels of heroin addiction amongst its young people. The Shia regime in Iran and the Taliban have traditionally been at loggerheads, and for the last decade Iran has had to spend a great deal in manning its border with Afghanistan in order to keep a check on the drug trade.

The authoritative Asia Society Task Force report ("Back from the Brink? A Strategy for Stabilizing Afghanistan-Pakistan", April 2009) quite correctly emphasises a multi-regional approach to restore democracy and establish peace in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The report urges the establishment of "regular dialogue and exchanges over Afghanistan and Pakistan with Russia, China, India, Iran, Turkey, the Central Asian states, and Saudi Arabia, seeking a means of cooperation with all in conjunction with our NATO allies and other international partners to... seek agreement with regional and global powers over the stabilization of Afghanistan".

Washington will nevertheless have to navigate tricky waters in winning broader cooperation. Can the Obama administration, for instance, collaborate with Iran in tackling the narcotics trade while leaving other
outstanding disputes on the back-burner? The US role in supporting the military dictatorships of Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan and in propping up other leaders in central Asia for its own narrow interests also needs to be reconsidered. Supporting a dictatorship in one region to establish "democracy" in another can only yield short-term results at best.

India's role

India remains an important but problematic component of the puzzle. It has historically played a significant role in promoting democracy in Afghanistan. But again, like the US, its approach has been largely instrumentalist. It has allied with those "democratic" elements of Afghanistan which New Delhi saw as its strategic, regional partners in countering Pakistan. This was the logic behind India's support for the Northern Alliance led by the (at times brutal) warlord, the late Ahmed Shah Massoud.A similar logic applies to India's support of Hamid Karzai's government.

Nevertheless, India is playing a serious role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Since Karzai took over, India has committed $750 million for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, which makes it the fifth largest b-ilateral donor after the United States, Britain, Japan and Germany.

According to reports there are over 3,000 Indians working on different projects in Afghanistan, many of whom have been targeted by the Taliban and its supporters in Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency, who see India's presence in Afghanistan as opposite to Pakistani interests. Investigations have now proved the ISI's role in the infamous bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul on 7 July 2008.

The mention of "supporting the lowering of tensions with India, especially through composite dialogue" in the Asia Society Task Force Report is being seen by many in India as a suggestion for third party intervention in its long standing dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir. The view is further reinforced by the Indian diplomatic and political establishment's general scepticism of the Democracts when it comes to the question of Kashmir; the impression in New Delhi is that US Democratic governments historically tend be "Pakistan-friendly".

That the Obama administration's special envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, is ostensibly tasked only with Afghanistan and Pakistan (and not India) is a measure of how gingerly Washington is stepping around the issue of Kashmir. India resists any suggestion that the situation in Kashmir and the violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan are linked. India also insists that Kashmir can only be resolved bilaterally, opposing any third party intervention.

It helps New Delhi that it can argue from a position of strength about Kashmir. The country's rise on the geo-political stage, its increasing economic strength, its nuclear power, and its desire to present itself as as a responsible stakeholder in the international system all weigh in its favour.

Events in Kashmir also abet New Delhi's line. The high turn out in recent state elections in Kashmir, the decision by Sajjad Lone, a major separatist leader, to contest in this year's parliamentary elections and the public wrangling over calling for an election boycott by the Hurriyat, an umbrella organisation of separatists, point to improving conditions in the restive region.

At the same time, these positive signs should encourage India to be less touchy over Kashmir. Whatever the causes of violence in Kashmir, the ongoing crisis there has symbolic redolence across the border in Pakistan, strengthening the hand of Pakistani hard-liners, militarists and Islamists. As a mature democracy, India should be open to dialogue with any country that shuns violence and is willing to resolve differences through dialogue. This will open more space for the democratic and liberal elements of Pakistan (and of Afghanistan) to counter Islamic fundamentalism and militancy in their region. It will also isolate the right wing Hindu chauvinist parties in India that have been trying to whip up communal rhetoric after the Mumbai attacks of last November.

Who are the " Taliban" in Pakistan? Islamist militants in the country have won significant international attention after wrestling control over the Swat Valley, the restive region in northern Pakistan where elements of sharia law are now in place. Yet these militants do not self-identify as "Taliban", unlike the Afghan Taliban who chose the name for themselves, and preferred it to the then generic term "mujahideen". The term "Taliban" means students; the original Taliban were educated in madrassas, religious schools. Groups and individuals that are being labelled the "Taliban in Pakistan" (TIP) are very different from their Afghan counterparts in important respects. It is pertinent not just to think through the implications of these differences but also to raise questions about why distinguishing details are being lost in the media frenzy of recent months.  

In Swat, the group that has gained the most notoriety in recent months calls itself Tehreek Nifaz e Sharia Mohammadi (TNSM). This can be roughly translated as the "Movement for the Implementation of Mohammaden Law". However, such a rough translation is inevitably problematic because substituting "Law" for "Sharia" here conveys the sense of a rigid set of rules. The "sharia" is, instead, a fairly broad set of guidelines allowing greater subjectivity and contextualisation to the individual judge than "law" does. (See for instance, Mohammed Qasim Zaman, Ulema in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change, 2007; Wael Hallaq, Authority, Continuity and Change in Islamic Law, 2001)

Humeira Iqtidar is a research fellow at the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge.

Her research focuses on theories of secularism and secularisation through an ethnographic focus on Islamist groups in Pakistan.

Unlike the core of the Afghan Taliban, the so-called TIP are not madrassa educated; most of them are semi-literate or illiterate. Those who have received some educational training have generally attended local schools but not madrassas. Based on what little information there is about the militants, it seems that the leadership of the TIP consists in large part of men who have worked or continue to work in shops, as day labourers, as hawkers and peddlers, or in the case of the current leader, Maulana Fazlullah, as a chair-lift operator.

The TNSM was started by Sufi Mohammed, a local religious leader, in 1992. Since the beginning there have been suspicions regarding his relationship with the ISI - Pakistan's now infamous intelligence agency. The speculation is that ISI support for his movement for the imposition of sharia in Swat in 1992 created instability that put tremendous pressure on the government of then prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Those were the days when the ISI was very suspicious of Benazir Bhutto's support for its activities; later, perhaps, such conflicts of interest no longer existed.

Here at least the TNSM shares a history with other Islamic militant groups; the progeny outstrip the desires and commands of their parent. After his largely unsuccessful attempt to force his way into public view in the 1990s, Sufi Mohammed came to wider attention when he issued a call for the support of Afghan Taliban after the US invasion Afghanistan in 2001. Tellingly, his call for support received a lukewarm response from the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Arrested by the Pakistani government for inciting violence, he was released from prison in 2008.  

During this period his son-in-law Fazlullah headed his movement. Fazlullah's claim to fame, initially, was his FM radio channel and, in particular, his own program which established a significant following among the women of Swat. This is paradoxical given his emphasis on public piety, the burden of which often falls on women. Nevertheless, it appears from local reports that the FM radio channel had some variety in its offerings - from recipes to discussions on local politics - and was popular enough to be noteworthy. 

How and why Fazlullah decided the time was ripe for his call to arms, and precisely what was the extent and nature of his activities up till that point remain uncertain due to the little information available. What is quite certain is that the Pakistani army's decision to blockade the region - at times stopping the movement of food and medical supplies - and to attack some villages swelled the ranks of the TNSM. After an uncertain and largely ill-planned foray into the valley, the army retreated leaving the TNSM with a moral victory and control over some regions.

A recent report in the New York Times claims that the Swat Taliban have exploited class rifts within Swat to deepen their hold. They first targeted the two dozen or so local landlords. Each time a landlord fled in response to TNSM threats, local peasants were allowed greater access to the vacated land. The new arrangements also allowed for a share of revenue for TNSM. Other reports in Pakistani newspapers suggest that emerald mines from the area have been reopened under a profit sharing scheme with the local miners.

While critics have slammed the government for making concessions that allow sharia law in the region, the motivation behind imposing sharia may stem from more than just religious zeal. The much discussed Nizam-e-Adl (Mechanisms for Justice) regulation that was passed as part of the ceasefire agreement between the Taliban and the government of Pakistan and ratified by President Asif Ali Zardari on 14 April, makes perfunctory mention of the desire to adhere to Quranic injunctions, but rather is concerned primarily with providing quick and effective justice. The mechanisms may be misguided, open to abuse and problematic, but it is easy to see how the fundamental thrust of the regulation has found resonance locally. It is ultimately an endeavour to bypass Pakistan's judicial system that is heavily biased against the powerless, and to facilitate quick decision-making.  

A history of inequity and resistance may feed into contemporary events. The Malakand area of Swat was an important hub of peasant mobilisation during the 1970s, agitations that were suppressed only with a certain amount of brutality and with the connivance of local landlords and the state machinery. Not surprisingly, the landlords are often the region's political leaders and administrative officials. Though it would be quite a stretch to see the TSNM in Swat as the heirs of these older peasant movements, their legacy no doubt lingers in the restive region. 

Much media attention has focused on the worsening plight of women in Swat, particularly after the video-taped public flogging of a 17 year-old girl. Unfortunately, the kinds of atrocities perpetrated by the TNSM against women also occur in the feudal holdings of many of the "secular" political elite of Pakistan. Yet these incidents do not make headlines in the same way. Few Pakistanis can ignore the fact that restricting women's mobility and reducing their educational opportunities (as the TNSM intend to do) along with gang rape, abduction, and honour killing have a long history in southern Punjab and Sind, areas where both President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani have vast landholdings.  

The alleged video recording the public flogging of a woman by Taliban in Swat has not been conclusively proven as authentic. A woman named Chand Bibi was initially identified as the one being flogged. However, she was reported to have sworn before a judge that the video was not hers (Jang newspaper, 11 April, 2009, front page). It is entirely feasible that she did so under duress. Quite rightly, the video generated debate and outrage within Pakistani print and television media.

Along with the very legitimate concern for women's rights, sectors of the Urdu language press as well as various local TV channels expressed disquiet that the video and its reception have echoes of the campaigns carried out just before the US attack of Afghanistan. "White men liberating brown women from brown men" (to use Gayatri Spivak's terminology) has a long history in justifying wars and occupations. The brutal treatment of women by the Afghan Taliban became the subject of email petitions, news reports and first person accounts in magazines like Elle, Ms. and Cosmopolitan.

Charles Hirschkind and Saba Mahmood point out the usefulness of this campaign in justifying the attack on Afghanistan and the callousness that was allowed within this framework:

"In the context of this intense concern for Afghan women, it is striking how silent the vast majority of Americans have been about civilian casualties that resulted from the US bombing campaign. In December 2001 - two months after the start of the US military offensive - the Feminist Majority website remained stubbornly focused on the ills of Taliban rule, with no mention of the hundreds of thousands of victims of three years of drought who were put at greater risk of starvation because US bombing severely restricted the delivery of food aid. The Feminist Majority made no attempts to join the calls issued by a number of humanitarian organizations - including the Afghan Women's Mission - to halt the bombing so that food could be transported to these 2.2 million Afghans before winter set in." (Feminism, the Taliban, and Politics of Counter-Insurgency, Anthropological Quarterly, 2002)

Hirschkind and Mahmood wrote this in 2002. It is arguable whether women in Afghanistan have benefited at all from the invasion since then. Even with the best of intentions the actual reach of the NATO forces remains severely limited within Afghanistan, and the writ of the Karzai government hardly extends beyond Kabul.  

This is not to say that the developments in Swat should not cause concern, or that TNSM deserve our support, but rather that we need to look deeper to see where their strength stems from. Only then can we come up with an effective counter-strategy. The way the crisis is being constructed in mainstream media - highlighting the group's affinity with the Afghan Taliban - seems likely to generate only one kind of response- a military one. US and UK governments have been openly pressurising Zardari to take the military option. Since Sunday, Pakistani troops have already started another "operation" in Buner. 

However, the attention that the Swat TNSM have received from the US administration, including most recently Hilary Clinton, in recent weeks belies more than benign concern for the fate of the Swatis. The threat of these "Taliban" justifies the blatant disregard for civilian lives evidenced by the US army's drone attacks inside Pakistan and creates the ground for an overt extension of the war in Afghanistan to Pakistan. This extension of the war in Afghanistan to Pakistan has resonances with earlier tried and tested strategies of the Pentagon. Using a template from the Vietnam war, Washington's "AfPak" strategy follows a familiar logic: "The US has pretty much won the war in Vietnam/Afghanistan. This is the last little bit that needs sorting now, because Cambodia/Laos/Pakistan are harbouring Communists/Taliban. Once they are cleared up we can declare complete victory."

Pakistan face many real problems, stemming in large part from the stifling inequity that pervades its political structures. The task of tackling these challenges is not abetted by intensifying militancy in the country, which has increased dramatically since the US invasion of Afghanistan, a spillover effect that Pakistan can ill afford.

However, it is still not beyond the capacity of Pakistani society to contain these militants. I am reminded here of what Shirin Ebadi, Iranian Nobel Laureate and Human Rights Activists said in response to a question from an audience at Cambridge University some years ago. She was asked about what feminists in the west could do to help women in Iran. "Nothing," she said, "We are capable of fighting our own battles and will manage, as long as you can stop your governments from invading us."

Last Monday, at 10pm, my phone beeped.

"The Sri Lankan cricket team attacked by terrorists in Lahore," read the text message.

"This is outrageous," my husband mumbled, reaching for the TV remote.

I did not register footage of the attack in real time. Instead, as the bedlam played out around the Liberty Roundabout in Lahore, my mind turned back to November 2007 when I passed that spot on my last visit to my homeland.

The call to prayer had prompted my driver to mute the volume of the CD player. I controlled a twinge of annoyance to accommodate this gesture of respect. He turned the volume back up when the call ended. I didn't ask him to rewind the part I had missed.

And such is the balance we struck - and were constantly striking in our attempt to build a real pluralistic society.

Because Lahore's dusty embrace was big enough to absorb the designer clad liberals with their swanky parties, and the bearded shopkeeper who halts business five times a day to pray.

The Pakistan I grew up in was always an upholder of Islamic and conservative values in its constitution and in public life. But it remained home to energetic and strong liberal currents. We sustained both elements - albeit not to the same degree. Islamic influence flowed freely through our society, but citizens absorbed it only to the extent they desired. We coexisted in peace.

Now with the rising threat of a militant Islam - that is as frightening to the deeply religious Pakistani as it is to the liberal Pakistani - that balance is teetering.

It has been harder and harder to dismiss the steady trickle of terrorist attacks in Pakistan as random acts of violence. Expats like myself quell the rising waves of panic by calling each other and rehashing theories floating around on cable TV.

"They are targeting government buildings as retaliation against the military strikes in the northwestern tribal areas," I said to my husband when they struck the Lahore High Court last January.

"They are out to get foreigners," I explained to myself when they attacked the Islamabad Marriott in September.

"They hate liberals," I mumbled after the incident at Lahore's World Performing Arts Festival in November.

Ashamed and alarmed as I am at these events, reading and watching the pundit post-mortem is even more painful. More and more, Pakistanis feel blamed for what is happening to our country. Like a pack of salivating hyenas, the experts gather to point fingers at the failed state, the complacent people, the inept government.

I have a hard time reconciling the place of which they speak and my home of twenty four years. Rabia Mughal is a San Francisco-based journalist and writer

They say it is important to disarm an unstable nuclear Pakistan. I don't have a more peaceful memory than that early spring drive by a sun-sprinkled canal brushed by weeping willows. As they warn of Islamic militancy, I remember young couples dancing up a colourful bhangra storm on the night before my wedding. As they discuss the Taliban's bloody campaign against girls' schools, I recall heated political debates with my girlfriends at late night coffee shops.

For my generation of Pakistanis, this disconnect is very real.

We recognise our share of responsibility for the horrors going on inside our borders. There are warped and misguided people in Pakistan as in any country. But I also know from my years in Pakistan that these problems are not exclusively the result of faults in our society.

We made mistakes. Weary of the constant power struggle amongst corrupt leaders we chose to make individual well-being a priority. We placed guards at the gates of our neat bungalows, made quality education the privilege of the few, and neglected the sweeping economic disparity in the country.

So when international terrorism - backed by the wealth of many other countries - chose my homeland as a battleground, they had a ripe recruiting field.

Drones, bombs, and international rebuke are now tuning out the voices of moderate Pakistanis. And it is just as well because for too long we have viewed the war in our own country from a distance. Even though news of violence in troubled border regions was a source of concern in the metros, the Afghan frontier seemed so far away.

Then the conflict spilled into Swat, the picturesque valley not far from Islamabad. Suicide attacks then reached the capital itself, and subsequently Lahore with men detonating themselves a quarter of a mile from my father's office.

Last week's shooting at the Sri Lankan cricket team has finally shaken me into accepting reality. The war on terror will not remain confined to "that region." It is knocking on my door threatening to break it down.

Now that so much is at stake, I realise in a very real sense how heavy a price Pakistan is paying for this war - in civilian blood, in jeopardised security, in a stigmatised national identity, in a murky, unsure future.

Though enmeshed in the conflicts in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Americans view the war as a sad but distant affair, far removed from their own lives. They need to realize that this is their war; the key to solving the problem is not just to urge Pakistan to take more decisive action, but to build a mutual understanding of the "common threat". Just as Pakistanis are waking up to the encroaching disaster, so too must Americans.

The peace deal in the Swat valley between Taliban and other Islamist fighters and the Pakistani government announced over a week ago, which was to last ten days, is on shaky ground as new developments show mistrust and suspicion between both sides. The deal was to permit the use of Sharia law in certain parts of the restive Federally Administered Tribal Areas as a concession to religious extremists.

The toD verdict: Just hours after the announcement on Saturday that a permanent peace settlement had been reached, Maulana Fazlullah, the most influential Taliban leader in the Swat valley, said in fact that the deal was just another ten-day extension. On Sunday, Taliban militants seized a senior Pakistan government official in the region, along with his entourage. His capture was said to be in retaliation for the arrest of three Taliban fighters in Peshawar. The kidnapped administrator, Khushal Khan, was released shortly after.

However, despite this happy ending it remains to be seen how calm the Swat valley will remain, with the Pakistani government expected to deliver 30,000 guns into the hands of "peaceful" groups of villagers to combat the threat of the Taliban and to give them a means of self-defence from the Islamists. The Director General of Inter-Services Public Relations, Major General Athar Abbas, has affirmed that the government has not ruled out the possibility of military action if peace deals fail.

A suicide bomb attack on Friday also showed the fragility of peace deals and the danger of not only conflicts between the government and the Taliban, but also of inter-religious conflict in the form of Sunni-Shia violence. No blame has yet been attributed for the explosion which occurred 270 km from the capital Islamabad.

Monday saw the start of talks between the US, Pakistan and Afghanistan to work out a common strategy for combating terrorism in the increasingly fraught region.

Bomb strikes tourist hotspot in Cairo

A homemade bomb went off in a crowded area of eastern Cairo near the popular Khan el-Khalili bazaar on Sunday, killing a French tourist and injuring at least 20 people including French, Egyptian, Saudi and German nationals. The last attack on this market was in April 2005, and resulted in the death of three tourists. Though suspects who are thought to have carried out the latest bombing have been identified by the Egyptian police, nobody has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks. Speculation continues as to whether there is a link between this attack, the only one to have targeted tourists in the last three years, and Egypt's continuing closures of its border crossings into the Gaza strip.

Religious hardliners continue to oppose government in Somalia

Hopes that the involvement of Islamist elements in Somalia's government would lead to a new and more peaceful political climate in the country were dashed at least temporarily on Sunday when Islamist militants attacked a compound of troops on Sunday. Depending on the source, it is thought that either mortar bombs were detonated or suicide bombers blew themselves up at the gates of the compound, situated in the capital Mogadishu, resulting in the death of 11 Burundi soldiers who were part of the 3,500-strong African Union peacekeeping force stationed in Somalia. Fifteen others were seriously wounded. This attack follows the recent formation of a new government in Somalia under the moderate Islamist president Sheikh Sharif Ahmed; some opposition al-Shabab fighters have stated their support for the new president, but hardliners continue their call for the expulsion of foreign troops from the country.

Ongoing unrest in Nigeria

Just under thirty people were wounded in violence which erupted in Bauchi in Nigeria, on Saturday. The town is not far from Jos, where riots between Christians and Muslims over a disputed election killed hundreds last year.

Fears of domestic terrorism in Greece on the rise

Since the death of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos at the hands of the police last year, violence and riots have shaken the Greek capital of Athens. Last Wednesday, what has been called the "new urban guerrilla movement" made an attempt to set off an explosive devise outside a bank in the city, a move which could potentially have killed hundreds, given the size of the bomb. The increasing threat from these city-based terrorist groups culminated, on Saturday, in a warning issued by militants to journalists; the former say that press are yet another symbol of the corrupt institutions against whom they are fighting.

Rocket attacks and retaliation amidst call for an arms embargo

A rocket shot from Lebanon into Israel on Saturday wounded three people when it landed near the town of Maalot, leading to immediate Israeli retaliation in the form of the shelling of parts of southern Lebanon. These actions took place despite calls by the UN forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) for a cessation of military action. The militant Shia Muslim group Hizbollah, who form part of the Lebanese government and against whom Israeli waged war in 2006, denied responsibility for the rocket strikes. These acts of aggression come as Amnesty International called, on Monday, for an international arms embargo on Israel. A report released by the human rights organisation accuses both Ehud Olmert's government and the Hamas militia of war crimes, saying that their respective uses of white phosphorous and rocket attacks on civilians were violations of the Geneva Conventions. Both Hamas and the Israeli government reject the document as biased in favour of the other side.

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After the Mumbai attacks in late November 2008, heavy scrutiny fell on their alleged perpetrator, the Pakistan-backed and based militant outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). For all intents and purposes, LeT should be as good as dead. United Nations Resolution 1822 on al-Qaeda, the Taliban and their affiliates ensures that the group is now treated as "hostile" by 192 countries. Most countries in the west, including the United States, United Kingdom, France and Australia have already banned it under their own counter-terrorism laws. Most importantly, after the UN resolution last year and more recently after the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan cracked down against the LeT's front organization, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD). The Pakistani government has closed over one hundred offices of JuD, placed key leaders like Hafiz Mohamed Saeed under house arrest, shut down at least one LeT training camp in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and frozen the bank accounts of the JuD. JuD's office in Muridke, near Lahore, was brought under government control in late January and a Punjab state official has taken up residence in the complex to keep a check on activities there. Several schools and hospitals run by the JuD have been taken over by provincial governments (87 of over 160 schools have been shut completely).

All these measures taken thus far by Islamabad, however, may prove inadequate in uprooting  LeT from the landscape of militancy in Pakistan. The LeT, under various aliases and mutations, is prepared to stubbornly weather the fallout of its actions. Interrogation reports of Ajmal Amir, the sole captured terrorist from the Mumbai attacks, show that the assault benefited from months of planning. Given its history of stirring trouble in India, LeT was not unprepared to handle the consequences of its operation. LeT's remarkable resilience - a trait highlighted in my earlier profile of the group on openIndia (see Raja Karthikeya Gundu, "Lashkar-e-Taiba: a profile", 5 December 2008) - has come to the fore despite premature reports of its demise. 

A multi-headed hydra

On the face of it, the arrests of Hafiz Mohammed Saeed and Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhwi - the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai attacks - and other senior commanders would seriously damage LeT's planning capacity. However, Hafiz Saeed has been only the ideological head of the group for some time, the chief public promoter of its agenda. His role is analogous to that of Osama bin Laden in al-Qaeda, who has supposedly delegated most of the group's operational responsibility to Ayman al-Zawahiri. Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhwi did lead LeT's operations. He should be adequately interrogated and tried for the Mumbai attacks and several other crimes staged by the group. Similarly, Yusuf Muzammil, a LeT facilitator based in Pakistan-administered Kashmir who New Delhi seeks to extradite, must be found and brought to justice. Raja Karthikeya Gundu is a Junior Fellow at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy

But decapitation of the group's leadership may not in itself affect LeT much and is unlikely to be effective in the short to medium term. Despite the arrests of the leadership, mid-level commanders and "coordinators" of the LeT regularly speak to the press. The mid-level agents, most of whom have experience in planning and staging tactical attacks in Kashmir and recently in eastern Afghanistan, remain a real source for concern. The number of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militants detained since the start of the crackdown in the wake of the Mumbai attacks varies from fifty to two hundred, depending on the account. But most international estimates (such as the RAND Corporation estimate) of the total manpower of LeT believe it to be upwards of 1,500. Much of the rest of the LeT remains at large, potentially switching to other terrorist groups, or continuing to carry out the group's pre-determined strategy.

Shifting to Afghanistan

Even before the crackdown by the Pakistani government went into full swing with the arrest of Lakhwi in December, LeT reportedly asked its cadres to leave Pakistani territory for Afghanistan. A number of the group's recruits who had moved into the restive tribal areas of northwest Pakistan from Kashmir at the onset of the winter, were subsequently ordered to leave those tribal areas for Afghanistan. LeT is no stranger to operating in Afghanistan (some researchers argue that LeT, as a fighting force, was actually formed in Kunar province of Afghanistan in 1992, during the days of the Afghan civil war).

In recent years, the LeT is believed to have established a base in Afghanistan's Kunar province, to the north of Barg-e-Matal. The LeT joined the Taliban in a lethal attack on a US and Afghan army outpost in Wanat, in Kunar province in July 2008. The same month, the Indian embassy in Kabul was bombed, and the suicide bomber involved was identified by India as 22-year-old Hamza Shukoor, a former member of the LeT.

More money, more problems

The UN resolutions ensured that the assets of LeT were frozen, with a travel ban been placed on its top functionaries. All UN member states are banned from supplying arms directly or indirectly to the group. Of these measures, the one that would normally hurt a terrorist group most is the freezing of its assets. Although some commentators argue that cutting off funding does not stop a terrorist group given that the average terrorist attack is rather inexpensive, it is undeniable that freezing cash flows affects a group's ability to stage attacks. Training, equipping and arming recruits, paying bribes to corrupt officials to facilitate movement, etc, all require money. In some cases, a recruit's family is financially compensated if he is killed, a major incentive for recruitment among the poor. (In Ajmal Amir Kasab's case, he was allegedly told by the LeT that his family would be paid 150,000 rupees if he were to achieve "martyrdom" during the Mumbai operation).

The funds freeze should have limited LeT/JuD activities, but in the lead up to the UN ban, JuD transferred money out of most its public bank accounts. As a charity, JuD raised millions of dollars for relief work. Some of it was well spent on relief operations after the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan-administered Kashmir (£5 million raised) and after the October 2008 earthquake in Balochistan. But the rest, a sizeable chunk, went into funding terrorist operations of the likes of Mumbai. (In fact, British intelligence followed this money trail to JuD to bust the 2006 plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic). 

Because of funding constraints and the potential for misuse by recruits on the ground, terrorist groups are generally scrupulous about accounting and documentation. There should be a wealth of evidence for Pakistani officials to find. However, JuD may have destroyed its financial records in the run-up to the crackdown. Unless Pakistani authorities gain access to all the group's ledgers and journals, the true extent of JuD's financial reach may never be known. The issue is compounded by the fact that a large number of contributors to JuD in recent years donated under the assumption that they were contributing to a charity, not knowing how their money would be used.

Even if bank accounts are frozen, cutting off funding to terrorist groups is extremely difficult. The system of hawala, which is a common money-laundering practice in south Asia, often facilitates the transferring of money by terrorist groups. Several such avenues are available to terrorist groups in south Asia due to legal loopholes and systemic weaknesses. For instance, in Afghanistan, middle east-based contractors engaged in the post-Taliban construction boom have been suspected of collaborating with "customers" who seek to transfer ill-gained money out of the country. The contractors do this by over-invoicing the customers, allowing the latter to transfer money to off-shore accounts in the Gulf. In addition, LeT's funding fronts are believed to have received close support from the notorious kingpin of the Mumbai underworld, Dawood Ibrahim, who has been under international crosshairs as a result of his links with Osama bin Laden.

Going global

Since the early 2000s, LeT's primary recruitment drives have been inside Pakistan. But the group cannot any longer function in the open in the country. In fact, since the 2002 ban of the LeT by the Musharraf government, the group does not use the name openly. But despite functioning under a plethora of names since 2002, LeT's identity was never diluted. Its cadre may now be coalescing under the banner of "Tehreek-e-Hurmat-e-Rasool" ("Movement for the Prophet's Honour"), a group which is now galvanizing political and public support in Pakistan to overturn the ban on JuD. (The Tehreek has actually been around for several months and had, in April 2008, called for Pakistan to sever relations with Denmark and Netherlands over the cartoons controversy, and also had condemned alleged American abuses of Islamic texts).

But even before the post-Mumbai crackdown, the group recruited overseas, especially among the Kashmiri and Pakistani diaspora in the United Kingdom. The LeT has been a clearinghouse for indoctrination and training for militant jihadists from several nations. It was also a successful service-offering enterprise (much like the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1970s), training recruits from all over the world to fight for other causes in various theaters of war, including Chechnya, Bosnia and Iraq. Alumni of LeT training camps include Shehzad Tanweer and Mohamed Siddique Khan, who were among the 7/7 London bombers, Richard Reid the shoe bomber, and David Hicks, an Australian al-Qaeda operative. LeT's active cadre also includes Arab recruits. Mahmoud Mohammed Bahaziq, the chief fund raiser for the group, is a Saudi national. Just four years ago, LeT boasted that it had recruited from at least seventeen nations, including Algeria, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Chechnya, United States and the UK.

After the Mumbai attacks, several jihadist websites featured congratulatory messages to LeT. According to a SITE Intelligence group report, some of these messages were posted by people who described themselves as "wannabe members" of LeT and exhorted the group to carry out more such attacks. The JuD could potentially capitalise on this support to create sleeper cells in several nations in the months to come.

The propaganda war

One of LeT's most distinguishing aspects as a terrorist group is its remarkable ability to utilise the "new media" to spread its message and reach out via the Internet to its preferred audience - well-educated, young professionals who can be recruited or tapped for funds and other logistical support. The LeT website vanished after the Pakistan government's ban in 2002 but the JuD website, which subsequently came up, attracted a large audience. Since the December crackdown, JuD's website has been discontinued. But JuD's web presence is not totally extinct. The website of JuD's charitable foundation, Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq, which was used to attract donations online, is still functional.

Even if the Idara is not being used to raise money, it still acts as a propaganda tool for JuD in portraying itself to be only a religious charity. Similarly, JuD's ability to publish and disseminate printed material may not have been checked. The organization's relief camps in Balochistan are still functional. While the camps themselves may be providing honest relief and rehabilitation services, authorities must be wary of the way the camps are run, lest they be used as sites for indoctrination and recruitment.

Provincial authorities have taken over several schools run by JuD, appointing "special supervisors" for the schools. However, there has been little change among the teachers retained in the employ of these schools since the state does not have the resources to replace them. Given that a number of these teachers are former militants who fought in Indian Kashmir and preach the virtues of jihad to their students, the mere change of administration may not be able to prevent the indoctrination of vulnerable schoolchildren. After the earthquake in 2005, nearly four hundred orphaned and fatherless children were taken by the JuD and placed in its madrasas. In some cases, JuD allegedly paid $10,000 to 19,000 to buy boys from their parents or guardians. These children need to be traced and rehabilitated urgently.

State complicity?

By far the most contentious issue stirred by the Mumbai attacks is whether the Pakistani state or any of its organs was complicit or gave tacit support to the terrorists who planned and conducted the assault. Elements of the Pakistani army or its intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), stood to benefit if the Mumbai attacks resulted in war between Pakistan and India, since any new conflagration would derail the bilateral peace process, destabilize the democratic government of Pakistan, and halt the war of attrition with the Pakistani Taliban in northwest Pakistan. Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban, reportedly promised to halt hostilities against the Pakistan army in case of a war with India. Subsequently, a senior army official described Baitullah as a "patriotic Pakistani".

Though active duty Pakistani officers and officials have not been connected to the atrocity in Mumbai, American intelligence agents suspect that former or retired Pakistani army or intelligence officers might have played a role in the attacks. Among others, Hamid Gul, the former Director General of the ISI, has been a close supporter of LeT. The United States is believed to have forwarded a list with names of four former ISI officers to the United Nations, including Gul's, asking them to be declared "international terrorists". A top management reshuffle of the ISI, including the replacement of its chief, Lt Gen Nadeem Taj, was initiated by the civilian government of Asif Ali Zardari to reform the ISI in August and September 2008, in the wake of reports of clandestine ISI support for the Taliban in Afghanistan and the ISI's role in the Indian embassy bombing in Kabul. A detailed and independent probe into the post-retirement activities of some of these former officers could give more teeth to the crackdown.

With their outrage in Mumbai, LeT managed to establish its "brand" and can better attract disaffected youth in the region and from abroad. In the months to come, LeT is likely to operate under a variety of aliases. Its central theatre of operations is likely to become Afghanistan, instead of Kashmir. Amphibious attacks such as Mumbai may be hard for LeT to repeat, but the group is likely to use sea-based infiltration to cross borders and reach targets. Through its network of alumni, it could also plan and stage smaller attacks in Europe. The onus remains on Islamabad to make sure none of these eventualities occur.