The young Pakistani army man shook his head in disbelief when he read in an English newspaper that Pakistan is not doing enough against terrorism. "We have pulled out 80,000 troops from the Indian border leaving a void for the Indians to fill, and what do we get? They’re saying we’re not doing enough," he says, requesting that he not be named.
The recently-foiled plot to blow up trans-atlantic airplanes has put a new focus on Pakistan’s efforts in the US-led war on terrorism. "Much has been done against al-Qaeda, but far less against domestic jihadi groups," says Samina Ahmed, South Asia project director of the International Crisis Group. "Al-Qaeda is definitely far less," agrees Talat Masud, former head of Pakistan’s secret service ISI, "but the Taliban are more, and there is a vast number of terrorists."
Pakistani security forces have arrested more than 700 terrorism suspects, but the president, General Pervez Musharraf, who under US pressure dropped support for al-Qaeda after 9/11, has allowed Islamic hardliners to flourish. Extremist parties have never been more powerful and Taliban-like militants have taken over swaths of tribal areas. "In the last three years there has been more radicalisation of the tribal belt and adjoining areas than in the whole history of Pakistan," says Masud.
Most notably, parts of the Waziristan region in Pakistan’s federal administered tribal areas (FATA) bordering Afghanistan have become increasingly ‘Talibanised’ since 2003. An alliance of local and foreign militants, many of them Uzbeks and Tadjiks, have taken hold in South-Waziristan, subjecting its population to Taliban-style rule. Last December they hanged more than 20 suspected criminals on a tree in Miran Shah. Two days later they bound them behind cars and dragged them through town. Barbers are forbidden to cut beards and shopkeepers are not allowed to sell music or videos.
The militants in Waziristan also plan and carry out attacks on Afghanistan’s south, where in the Uruzgan province 390 Australian troops work with the Dutch-led provincial recovery teams. "It is now becoming difficult to differentiate between the two, and yet their thinking is different. One is operating on the Afghan or Pakistan-level, and the other is operating on a pan-Islamic level," says Talat.
Misguided military actions in tribal areas against foreign militants, in which hundreds of innocent civilians have lost their lives, have infuriated the Pakistanis and driven tribal peoples into the hands of militants. "We are killing