And I Won't Ride With You

The second event that I referred to in my last post was the attack by the Taliban on a school in Peshawar, Pakistan.  Although one of the tenets of terrorism is that it is intended to strike terror into the population at large this attack, intentionally targeting a school resulting in the death of 137 school children may have been a bridge too far.

The sheer brutality of the attack was apparently intended to break the country's resolve to fight the Taliban and perhaps submit rather then suffer more such violent attacks.

It appears to have backfired.

The Afghan Taliban condemned the attack as un-Islamic.  In Pakistan, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a rival jihadist group in the rebel alliance and other sectarian groups denounced the attack on the school. 

In Islamabad the Red Mosque, home of the pro-Taliban cleric Abdul Aziz and the site of a fierce battle between the army and the jihadists in 2007, was  surrounded by protesters demanding that Aziz leave the country and go live in the Islamic State!

And lastly, there were public demands that the State stop distinguishing between "good" and "bad" Taliban, to stop supporting jihadists in Afghanistan and India while waging war against some of them in Pakistan.

This was followed up by meetings between the Afghan and Pakistan governments to co-ordinate going after Afghan jihadists who seek refuge in Pakistan, and Pakistan jihadists who seek refuge in Afghanistan.  

I do not expect that the opaque linkages between parts of the jihadist movement and the more conservative members of the Pakistani establishment will be broken in one fell swoop. 

But perhaps this atrocity is the start of a major shift within Pakistani society.  Perhaps this is where those opposed to extremism go on the offensive and demand that the state stop dithering.  

And that could, just maybe, foreshadow the demise of religious fanaticism in Pakistan.