New determination?
Friday, May 29, 2009
Editorial, The News International, Pakistan
Friday, May 29, 2009
There is a change in the attitude of the government, most of the political parties and the various law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. The change is that finally the scales seem to have fallen from their eyes and, to double the metaphor, the gloves have come off. Hitherto there has been an obvious reticence to take on some of the terrorist and extremists that threaten all of us. The reasons for this are – were – many and complex; ranging from those who saw the terrorists as somehow 'on our side' to those who understood them only in the context of them being a tool in the hand of external forces.
There are several indicators that allow us to make the deduction that something really has changed. One of them is the arrest in Islamabad of a man said to be a senior Taliban commander, who was picked up whilst being taken from the house of a cleric prominent in the Lal Masjid movement to another safe house. The car he was travelling in was being driven by a former FATA parliamentarian – a man who might have expected a degree of immunity in all but the most recent past. Such men are not strangers come amongst us to fight some proxy battle on behalf of foreign powers. They are our own people who, for whatever reason, have gone down a path that leads them away from the principles that our state was founded upon. Now is the time for us all, every man woman and child who has an investment in the stability and prosperity of Pakistan, to stand four-square against them, for they are the evil that darkens all our lives.
Source
Friday, May 29, 2009
There is a change in the attitude of the government, most of the political parties and the various law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. The change is that finally the scales seem to have fallen from their eyes and, to double the metaphor, the gloves have come off. Hitherto there has been an obvious reticence to take on some of the terrorist and extremists that threaten all of us. The reasons for this are – were – many and complex; ranging from those who saw the terrorists as somehow 'on our side' to those who understood them only in the context of them being a tool in the hand of external forces.
There are several indicators that allow us to make the deduction that something really has changed. One of them is the arrest in Islamabad of a man said to be a senior Taliban commander, who was picked up whilst being taken from the house of a cleric prominent in the Lal Masjid movement to another safe house. The car he was travelling in was being driven by a former FATA parliamentarian – a man who might have expected a degree of immunity in all but the most recent past. Such men are not strangers come amongst us to fight some proxy battle on behalf of foreign powers. They are our own people who, for whatever reason, have gone down a path that leads them away from the principles that our state was founded upon. Now is the time for us all, every man woman and child who has an investment in the stability and prosperity of Pakistan, to stand four-square against them, for they are the evil that darkens all our lives.
Source
Labels: FATA, Militancy, Taliban, Terrorism, Tribal Areas
posted @ 6:16 PM,
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