Sharia for Peace! Peace In Our Time! “Re-emerging Alliance between Pakistani Military and Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” by Tufail Ahmad for MEMRI, April 1 (thanks to Looney Tunes):
Introduction
In the recent months, an old-new alliance has been re-emerging between the Taliban and Pakistan, aimed at countering the efforts of the U.S. and NATO troops against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Pakistani authorities recently signed two agreements with the Taliban — known as the “Shari’a for Peace deals” — which give the movement full authority to enforce the Shari’a law in the Swat Valley and broader Malakand region of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The Taliban’s part of the deal amounts to no more than an unwritten — and largely unfulfilled — promise to stop fighting the government forces in the area.
The deals come in the wake of three operations carried out by the Pakistani military against the Taliban in the last three years — operations in which the military conspicuously refrained from causing the movement significant harm or from killing its leaders.
The apparent capitulation of the Pakistani authorities to the demands of the Taliban is actually a part of a long-standing alliance between them. The Pakistani military — which actually formed the Taliban in the 1990s — has long been using this movement to control Afghanistan and as a tool in its confrontation with the West. The Taliban, for its part, uses the support and protection of Pakistan to consolidate its strength and gain control over increasingly large areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan….
Read it all.