President Musharraf has supposedly been fighting Islamic terrorism since he took control of Pakistan in a coup eight years ago. Benazir Bhutto repeatedly justified her role in a future Pakistan by claiming to be a champion of democracy; Nawaz Sharif is also citing to his highly dubious democratic credentials at every opportunity on the campaign trail.

In Washington, both Republicans and Democrats regularly reiterate the link between Islamic radicalism in Pakistan and the safety of the American homeland. Across the porous border in Afghanistan, NATO forces also claim to be fighting Islamic insurgents. And just recently, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared that India was facing a common threat with Pakistan, the threat emanating from religious extremism.

But who exactly are these Muslim men (and women, in some instances) who have been painted with the broad terrorist brush since 9/11?

Following a recent trip to the restive Swat Valley, a student leader of the Peshawar-based Awami National Party said that "virtually every single armed follower of Mullah Radio [Mullah Fazlullah] comes from the most marginalized section of society; these men don’t have jobs, their families find it difficult to put two meals on the table, and they have been in some form of bondage—to warlords, landowners or smugglers—for decades. They are the ones being killed in the face of a brutal onslaught by the Pakistani army."

So let’s get the facts out first; we will get to religious fanaticism later. Which segment of the Pakistani population do these "terrorists" come from?

Firstly, the armed fighters in the North West Frontier Province are essentially landless and unemployed men who are caught up in the vicious nexus of deeply-entrenched commercial interests representing the Pakistani army, large landowners, market traders, village mullahs and drug kingpins.

Secondly, those taking orders from warlords in the neighbouring tribal areas are not only landless and unemployed; they are, for all practical purposes, living under the worst form of modern-day feudalism, whether in Pakistan or in Afghanistan. In fact, in the days following the Taliban’s downfall in late-2001, a veteran spokeswoman for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) had warned that "the complete failure of governments in this part of the world to resolve basic issues like land titles, and to implement genuine land reforms, has already created an economy which is entirely conditioned by the trade in drugs and arms; our young men have nowhere else to go in order to find work and to fend for their families."

In effect, the so-called Islamic militants are, in fact, unwilling mercenaries, within the context of the Afghanistan-Pakistan theatre. They may or not be devout Muslims, but they certainly are not committed to the destruction of Pakistan, India or the West. As harsh and alarming as it may seem, more than 95% of them are paid, directly or indirectly, to protect or further vested commercial interests.

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