The Taliban have struck back with stunning brutality. On Sunday, as the nation's Capital witnessed reopening of the Marriott, a suicide bomber set off a car bomb at a polling station in Buner district killing some 35 people including at least four children and injuring almost the same number. This was a revenge killing, claimed Maulana Shah Dauran, the deputy to Maulana Fazlullah who heads the Taliban movement in Swat.
Last August, six Taliban militants were killed by a Lashkar comprising local tribesmen. The revenge isn't yet over and every resident of Shalbandi, the village that had raised the pro-government Lashkar, would be eliminated, warned Shah Dauran over his FM radio.
He also banned the Rs 10 coin issued in commemoration of Benazir Bhutto's first death anniversary. The same Maulana Shah Dauran last week announced a complete ban on female education in the entire valley and adjacent areas, culminating his girl-school burning drive that tends to close doors of education on some 40,000 girl students. So much for the year-long army operation to roll back Talibanisation.
The retaliatory Buner killings are neither the first of the suicide-bombing incidents nor are bloodier than many before. But it does bring out some unique features the Taliban movement seems to have acquired over the year that it has survived in the face of the toughest military action against a domestic insurgency in Pakistan.
For instance, the victims of the Buner suicide-bombing included not only the ANP workers but also quite a few who belonged to the Jamaat-i-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazl); the latter considered as natural allies of the Taliban. The message broadcast by Maulana Shah Dauran justifying the carnage clearly suggests that attack was directed at the residents of Shalbandi as retribution in terms of an eye-for-eye tribal practice.
It lacked religious dimension, and it wasn't a kind of faithful's fury wreaked upon infidels. The ban announced by the Swati Taliban leadership on the BB coin speaks of a political facet of Talibanisation, as it speaks of the lingering anger nurtured by the Taliban against the PPP, both as a political party and government. Then there is this coincidence: on the day of soft-launching of the Marriott hotel the Taliban effectively conveyed that party is not yet over.
It remains a mystery as to why the various resolutions adopted by the parliament for a dialogue with the militants have not been honoured by the government. Despite repeated pledges to seek political solution only a military-specific approach is in works. Swat forms part of the settled areas of the NWFP and it was for the provincial government to take the lead in any move to curb militancy there, but that has have not happened.
For all practical purposes the ANP-led provincial government has taken the back seat. Why so, one need to ask. May be the outside powers having strategic interests in Pakistan's north-west want a perpetual turmoil to obtain there? Or, may be the military establishment of Pakistan wants the exclusive credit of victory over the Taliban.
But, as Buner suicide-bombing warrants, the country's political leadership must look beyond these considerations, openly and earnestly. The fact is that militancy has refused to go away despite such a heavy price the government and people have paid in terms of losses of life and property. It is the time to acknowledge that the current government policy has failed.
May be the government still exists in some buildings in Swat and other north-west areas and that principal roads are still with the security forces but the land and the people are being ruled by the Taliban. That is qualitatively a new situation and needs to be tackled accordingly. It is no more a hit-and-run guerrilla situation. The way out of this imbroglio is to hold negotiations with the militants; they are a reality, whatever name one may give them.
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