02 March 2009

Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid is a trusted source on AfPak.  His opinions have proven amazingly prescient.  His book "Taliban" was published six months before the 9/11 attacks, and provided a stark warning.  I interviewed Mr. Rashid in 2006 after I returned from Afghanistan.

Pakistan is slipping the noose around its own neck.  Giving up Swat to the Taliban would be like us giving up Georgia to the Ku Klux Klan.

Beaten and bowed, Pakistan goes to Taliban

Ahmed Rashid
March 1, 2009

Islamabad's latest capitulation shows the extremists are winning.

MAULANA Sufi Mohammed, a radical cleric freed last year after spending six years in jail for leading 10,000 Pashtun tribesmen in opposition to the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, has begun a new campaign. He is leading a peace march through the strategic Swat Valley in an attempt to persuade his son-in-law, Maulana Qazi Fazlullah, to accept the Government's offer of a ceasefire and enforcement of an Islamic system of justice in the valley.

The fact that Mohammed has embraced the Government's offer is a sign of how fully Islamabad has capitulated to the demands of extremists in the region. And the fact that the peace deal has not yet been accepted by Fazlullah, who leads the Swati contingent of the Pakistani Taliban and is closely allied with al-Qaeda, is a sign of how radicalised some of the region has become.

Please Click here to read the entire article by Ahmed Rashid on the WAToday.

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