The reality of Swat speaks for itself. "Nobody expects anything to change out here," a Swat sub-district official, who is currently packing up to go back to his hometown of Lahore, told an Al Jazeera stringer last week. "The Army is not going to dismantle the power structures here, a few hundred armed men and civilians will die, and then the local, low-intensity conflicts will continue, like nothing ever happened."

Now for the critical question: Is the West pursuing phantom terrorists in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theatre? The answer is an unequivocal YES.

An overwhelming proportion of those pitted against regular military forces are not Islamic militants; in fact, Islam has got nothing to do with their compulsion to work for warlords, smugglers, intelligence agencies or the Pakistan Army’s vast industrial empire. Devout, mosque-going Muslims they might be; but it is not religion which is driving them to kill and destroy.

If anything, the terrorism which we need to be concerned about is the terrorism to which the people of Swat, the rest of the North West Frontier Province, the tribal areas and, to set the record state, the rest of Pakistan are being subject to in their daily lives; the kind of terrorism only poverty can bring---malnourished children, abused women, dismal healthcare, impaired education, high unemployment and ever-rising levels of household debt owing to local money lenders.

The true nature of Al Qaeda and the Taliban needs to be thoroughly reviewed, without spin and propaganda. Are these loosely knit outfits, at the end of the day, mercenary outfits using religion simply as a convenient cover for personal gains?

The threat from the phenomenon of Political Islam—i.e. from parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami—is an entirely different type of threat altogether, rooted in the lower middle classes in the towns and cities of Pakistan. That threat can easily, and only, be countered if the struggle of impoverished Pakistanis in the countryside gathers momentum.

India offers a unique insight into that threat: without a genuine and powerful indigenous movement to resolve poverty and marginalization in the rural context, nothing can stop right-wing Hindu groups, backed by huge sections of the urban middle class and led by people like Narendra Modi, from sharply increasing their influence over Indian society within the next 1-2 years.

Page 3 of 3 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 3 | Next