Again, what Punjabi Taliban?

By Ahmed Quraishi

The term Punjabi Taliban was not first coined by anyone in Pakistan, including the so-called Punjabi Taliban themselves. It was coined in the United States by self-styled terrorism experts.

Analyzing Pakistan in ethnic terms is a distinctly Indian practice that flourished after 1971. It moved to the United States during the China- and Pakistan-specific US-India strategic alliance of the 1990s. It found wide currency in American policymaking circles after 9/11 as US officials and media became increasingly hostile to Pakistan and receptive to anti-Pakistan ideas, including the fantastic idea of dividing Pakistan into three states, a la Iraq. It is interesting to note how the US media and think tanks followed the same Indian areas of interest in the last three years: from the initial talk about Pashtunistan to the extensive attention to the idea of an independent Balochistan and now Punjab.

For the Americans and Indians, Punjabi Taliban is euphemism for Kashmiri groups. The United States is not suffering in Afghanistan because of militants based in Punjab. India is. And as with everything else, the United States is using the Afghan war to give an indirect strategic favor to India. The whole talk about differences between Obama's Washington and India is superficial. There is no sign yet that these differences affect the United States long term vision for India and its expanded strategic role in Afghanistan. The incumbent US administration is stuffed with Indian lobbyists and blunt India sympathizers.

India-inspired elements in Afghanistan have been using variations of the term Punjabi Taliban much before the Americans discovered it. They talked about Punjabi volunteers fighting along with Afghan Taliban. The ethnic part was deliberate since no one talked about the scores of Pakistani volunteers from Urdu-speaking, Kashmiri, Pashtun, Sindhi, and other Pakistani backgrounds. Singling out Pakistani Punjab has been a distinctly Indian practice for two reasons: One is the belief that Pakistan's military brass is Punjabi-speaking and thus attacking Punjab [and especially attacking the officers and their families] is the only way to scare and hurt this brass. And second is that many Kashmiri freedom activists and groups resisting Indian atrocities took refuge in the plains of Punjab, for practical reasons of proximity to the conflict zone in Kashmir.

So the target this time is Pakistan's support for pro-Kashmir groups. This perfectly syncs with how our American friends have recently been coming up with outlandishly bizarre theories about the 'global ambition and reach' of Kashmiri groups such as Lashkar e Tayyeba, which is a localized group at best and a result of Indian atrocities in Kashmir. Instead of helping India and Pakistan resolve Kashmir, our American allies are opportunistically browbeating us into starting a war in Punjab in the name of Punjabi Taliban.

Many Pakistanis know this, but some elements in our government are appeasing the Americans and using foriegn-coined names for groups that did not exist as recently as three years ago.

What is confusing Pakistanis is the actual presence of leftovers from sectarian groups that were financed by two Mid-Eastern countries in the 1980s and '90s. That funding is nearly over now but the sectarian cadres are now being used by other terrorists, including the TTP. In other words, someone is recruiting our assets and using them against us. And it makes sense. If we can do it, so can others. One of the terrorists involved in murdering Pakistani Ahmedis in Lahore confessed he was misled into thinking he was targeting the creators of blasphemous cartoons. Last year a terrorist who attacked a military industrial unit said he was told Americans, and not ordinary Pakistani mechanics and engineers, were working there.

This brings us to foreign meddling in Pakistan. Our national security managers erred when they allowed foreign spy agencies direct access to Afghan and Kashmiri religious groups during the 1992-95 Bosnia war. Brits, Americans and Saudis used Pakistani assets to wage a proxy war in the Balkans against Russia. This process created multiple agents within Pakistani ranks. These multiple agents who are Pakistanis and operate in the name of religion are suspected now to be working on multiple agendas considering the fluid security situation on our eastern and western borders.

The writer works for Geo television. Email: aq@ahmedquraishi.com