Dilemma faced by Pakistani Government

By Abdul Azeem
This post is a reaction to the article “Pakistan: Negligent on Terror?”, published in TIME on 30th June.

TIME: It’s almost like a bad joke. A bus driver, a ski lift operator and a gym rat have turned the Islamic world’s only nuclear-armed nation upside down. On Saturday Pakistani forces chased militants led by former bus driver Mangal Bagh from the fringes of Peshawar, a provincial capital 30 miles from the border with Afghanistan and a key transit point for vital supplies destined for U.S. and NATO forces fighting the Afghan insurgency….. Meanwhile, in Waziristan, followers of Baitullah Mehsud, the physical trainer turned assassin, have slaughtered at least 22 peace negotiators who arrived on behalf of the government seeking to cement a cease-fire accord. Both the CIA and Pakistan’s intelligence agencies say he is behind the attack that killed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December. Three years ago no one had even heard of these men. What happened?

Just few days back Pakistan armed forces started there latest offensive against Taliban with aim to push them back away from the provisional capital of Peshawar.

Pakistan armed forces and government are facing a tough dilemma here. Though how hard they try things keep on getting worse and worse. If government reaches a truce or pact with Taliban and Islamic extremists the American lobby starts shouting and every terrorist act in Afghanistan is blamed on Pakistan side of the border. If government goes on offensive against the extremists like Baitullah Mehsud or Mangal Bagh the internal opposition to government increases with increase in extremism and support for people like Baitullah Mehsud or Mangal Bagh in frontier and also a series of suicide bomb blasts across the whole country.

And all the time the American media and watch dogs keep on shouting about the failure of Pakistani armed forces and there inability to protect the borders where the fact of the matter is that it is the failure of American and Nato armed forces that allowed all these extremist and Taliban to cross over into Pakistan which has made situation inside Pakistan extremely fragile.

One must understand that these extremists fight a Gorilla tactic war and if the whole American and Nato armed forces with highly sophisticated technology could not contain the extremist elements in Iraq and Afghanistan then they should think twice before pointing fingers against the Pakistan Army.