The video of a young woman being beaten in Pakistan's Taliban-infested district of Swat has sparked considerable controversy inside Pakistan. The Pakistani president and prime minister ordered an investigation of the incident, and even Pakistan's Supreme Court got involved. The newly restored chief justice ordered government officials to testify in front of the court and ordered its own investigation.
But not all parties in Pakistan have expressed outrage over the incident. To many Pakistanis, everyone but their countrymen are responsible for the country's ills. Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the opposition party whose stance on the Taliban has been nebulous at best, has been silent over the incident. Imran Khan, the leader of a small political party that has taken pro-Taliban positions, deplored the whipping but said it was a plot by "international conspirators" to defame Islam and foil the Swat "peace deal." The Chairman of the Pakistan International Human Rights commission said the video "is fictitious and termed it a conspiracy to malign Islam."
Regardless of the political firestorm the flogging incident created inside Pakistan, it will fail to move the country closer to fighting the Islamist extremists in its midst. Oddly enough, the country sits by idly as suicide bombers and assault teams target government officials, the security forces, and even worshippers in mosques in Pakistan's largest cities. The Taliban carried out three suicide bombings just this weekend; sixteen police and paramilitary troops were killed in suicide attacks in Islamabad and North Waziristan, while 24 Shia worshippers were murdered in a suicide attack outside of a mosque in central Punjab province. Very rarely are any of the terrorists behind the attacks captured. Pakistani political leaders seem to express more outrage at the occasional American airstrikes that target al Qaeda and Taliban leaders than at the near-daily suicide attacks throughout the country.
