A fighter in Pakistan?

The Australian:

HE has one of the world's most dangerous jobs -- turning back the seemingly unstoppable tide of al-Qa'ida and Taliban-linked jihadi militancy sweeping across nuclear-armed Pakistan.

And Rehman Malik, as we talk in his Islamabad office, makes it clear that the days of pussyfooting in Pakistan's fight against the militants are over. "Look, we've got two choices," says Malik, formerly one of Benazir Bhutto's closest aides and now Pakistan's security supremo who heads the Interior Ministry.

"Either we can hand this country over to the Taliban, or we can fight. I am going to fight."

Later, speaking to MPs in the National Assembly, he is even more forceful: "The Government of Pakistan will not tolerate any nonsense," he says. "Wherever the Government's writ is challenged, we will take action."

Of the jihadi militants, he says: "We will wipe them out. We will not surrender before them."

It is the sort of tough talk that an increasingly worried world has been waiting to hear from Pakistan -- exactly what US President George W. Bush was demanding when, last month, he castigated Malik and his immediate boss, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, over Pakistan's failure to get to grips with the militants and the way al-Qa'ida and the Taliban enjoy free rein across great swaths of territory.

Under Malik, Pakistan's policy has been transformed from one of retreat to pursuit of al-Qa'ida and the Taliban. But his tough rhetoric has also him a target of islamic militants.

The suave, 57-year-old one-time boss of Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency, the equivalent of the Australian Federal Police, is an increasingly controversial figure as he takes Pakistan's war into areas it has previously avoided.

"I have no fear for my safety," he says when we meet in his home. "When it is time for you to go, you could as well die sitting in that chair."

In the few short weeks since Malik and Gilani returned from the White House, Pakistan's much-vaunted role in the war against terrorism has been transformed. For the first time in many months, the country is on the offensive, forcefully seeking to reassert the Government's writ while also pursuing dialogue with the militants and a path to peace.

Suddenly and with little fanfare, Islamabad's security forces are aggressively on the offensive in key areas where for months, if not years, the Government had virtually given up, leaving the militants to set up Sharia courts.

The results have been remarkable: in the key Bajaur Agency, long suggested as the most likely hideout for Osama bin Laden, more than 560 militants have been killed in less than a fortnight of fighting -- a reflection of just how serious the situation is in Pakistan's tribal areas.

Malik is also determined to rein in the country's increasingly militant madrassas, the nursery for Islamic extremism.

He recently called in the heads of several of the country's 15,000 registered Islamic schools and, in the words of one official, "banged their heads together and left them in no doubt about his expectations about how they should behave and what they teach their 2.5million students".

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Perhaps that explains the recent attacks against non combatants. There has been surprising little news of this fighting coming out of Pakistan. Perhaps the government is concerned about raising the passions of the militant Islamist masses. I hope it is an accurate story. Pakistan could do more if it would let US troops train their troops in counterinsurgency warfare.