As the Taliban moved into the district of Buner in April after securing the peace agreement that humiliated the Paksitani government, Pakistani political and military leaders rushed to assure the world that there was no threat to Islamabad or Pakistan's nuclear weapons. But Ahmed Rashid, the author over several authoritative books on the Taliban, describes what it is like to travel in Islamabad to meet the president. The city has taken on a siege mentality:
To get to President Asif Ali Zardari's presidential palace in the heart of Islamabad for dinner is like running an obstacle course. Pakistan's once sleepy capital, full of restaurant-going bureaucrats and diplomats, is now littered with concrete barriers, blast walls, checkpoints, armed police, and soldiers; as a result of recent suicide bombings the city now resembles Baghdad or Kabul. At the first checkpoint, two miles from the palace, they have my name and my car's license number. There are seven more checkpoints to negotiate along the way.
Apart from traveling to the airport by helicopter to take trips abroad, the President stays inside the palace; he fears threats to his life by the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda, who in December 2007 killed his wife, the charismatic Benazir Bhutto, then perhaps the country's only genuine national leader. Zardari's isolation has only added to his growing unpopularity, his indecisiveness, and the public feeling that he is out of touch. Even as most Pakistanis have concluded that the Taliban now pose the greatest threat to the Pakistani state since its creation, the president, the prime minister, and the army chief have, until recently, been in a state of denial of reality.
Islamabad and the city of Peshawar remain cities under siege, while Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Karachi are bracing for the next suicide attack.
Only after intense international pressure did the Pakistani military decide to take on the Taliban in Swat and the neighboring districts of Buner, Dir, and Shangla. The military has been battling to retake control of these districts for more than five weeks, and government officials state the operation will be finished within days, despite the fact that much of the district has yet to be cleared. Yet no senior Taliban leaders have been killed or captured during the offensive.
The Taliban have conducted what appears to be a tactical retreat into neighboring districts, some where they never maintained a presence. If the Pakistani Army fails to pursue the Taliban into these northern districts or the tribal areas, the short-term tactical success in Swat will be erased within the year.
