Pakistanis begin to recoginize Taliban venality

NY Times:

A year ago, the Pakistani public was deeply divided over what to do about its spreading insurgency. Some saw the Taliban militants as fellow Muslims and native sons who simply wanted Islamic law, and many opposed direct military action against them.

But history moves quickly in Pakistan, and after months of televised Taliban cruelties, broken promises and suicide attacks, there is a spreading sense — apparent in the news media, among politicians and the public — that many Pakistanis are finally turning against the Taliban.

The shift is still tentative and difficult to quantify. But it seems especially profound among the millions of Pakistanis directly threatened by the Taliban advance from the tribal areas into more settled parts of Pakistan, like the Swat Valley. Their anger at the Taliban now outweighs even their frustration with the military campaign that has crushed their houses and killed their relatives.

“It’s the Taliban that’s responsible for our misery,” said Fakir Muhammed, a refugee from Swat, who, like many who had experienced Taliban rule firsthand, welcomed the military campaign to push the insurgents out.

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But it is an opportunity that could just as quickly vanish, analysts and politicians warn, if Pakistan’s political leaders fail to kill or capture senior Taliban leaders, to help an estimated three million who have been displaced, or to create a functioning government in areas long ignored by the state. “This is a profound moment in our history,” said Javed Iqbal, the top bureaucrat in the North-West Frontier Province, the area of fighting. “My greatest fear is whether there is sufficient realization of this among people who make decisions.”

On Wednesday, in an audiotape, Osama bin Laden specifically cited the fighting in Swat and Pakistan’s tribal areas, blaming the Obama administration for the campaign and for sowing “new seeds to increase hatred and revenge on America.”

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Bin Laden has largely built al Qaeda exploiting a sense of victimization. Most of his recruiting videos are based on this sense. So it is not surprising that he would try to exploit the misery in Swat, but this time the people recognize who is to blame in much the same way that the Awakening Movement in Iraq was about Sunnis being tired of al Qaeda bullying and murder.

The people in Swat know who is responsible for the abusive treatment and the army should take advantage of that to get intelligence on Taliban elements trying to hide in the area. People in the rest of the country notice too and share the anger against the Taliban when they send human bombs into the cities on their mass murder for Allah operations.

It is time for a Pakistani Awakening Movement and Gen. Petraeus needs to help the Pakistani army encourage it.