http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=229877
Ayaz Amir
If FATA represents the cutting edge of terrorism in the name of Islam, Punjab, unfortunately, is the hinterland of this phenomenon. Or, to borrow a phrase from the repertoire of military folly, Punjab is the strategic depth of bigotry and extremism masquerading in the colours of Islam.
...
The dragon's teeth of our sorrows were scattered by Zia. We are reaping the harvest.
Next in the line of military saviours, Pervez Musharraf -- may Pakistan for all its faults never have such a saviour again -- could have reversed the trend of the Zia years. But he had only a limited understanding of things. President Asif Zardari is not the first of our accidental leaders.
...
The ghost it is trying to lay to rest was conceived and tested in its own laboratories. This is the Pakistani way of doing things. First create a problem and then invoke the power of heaven to eliminate it.
As an aside I can't help adding that one of the key figures instrumental in getting US Congress to fund the Afghan resistance was Congressman Charlie Wilson of Texas. Wilson was fond of a hard drink and fond of good-looking women, tempting qualities that suggested a swashbuckling knight errant. (Most men have Wilson's inclinations. But it is not given to everyone to fulfil them.) The irony is piquant: someone like him emerging as one of the central protagonists in an enterprise hailed by its partisans as a great victory of Islam.
...
Meanwhile Zia's missionary zeal, backed by Saudi money, was beginning to transform the Punjabi landscape. Madressahs or religious schools began cropping up everywhere, including Islamabad. Backed by state patronage, mullah power, hitherto not much of a factor in Pakistani politics, began to show its muscles.
There was a ban on politics in any case. Apart from PTV, there was no other TV channel and even PTV was being conquered by the mullahs. Newspapers lay under a heavy blanket of censorship. The only thing to do under Zia was to either watch Indian movies at home or perform the various rituals of religious hypocrisy in public. The begums of the good and great, never behind their men folk in bowing to the prevailing wings, entered heavily into the business of arranging religious ceremonies (milads) under one pretext or another. Pakistan became a very pious and hypocritical society. Even army promotions began to be affected by one's reputation for religious observance or otherwise.
All the extremist outfits with whose names we are now familiar emerged at that time: the jaish this and that, the lashkar so and so. Most of them were Punjab-based and members from all these organisations acquired battle experience in Afghanistan. My friend Colonel Imam of Afghan 'jihad' fame -- and who, like most good people, is from Chakwal -- takes enormous pride in saying that the most fearless fighters of all were from Punjab. And he should know for he was in the thick of it.
...
This was the mood then pervading the top ranks of the army and the intelligence agencies. So it is scarcely to be wondered at that when after the fall of Kabul to the 'mujahideen', a Pakistani delegation was on its way to the Afghan capital, no sooner had the aircraft carrying it entered Afghan airspace when those on board, including some Americans, were startled by a loud cry: "Allah-o-Akbar". This from the then ISI chief, the heavily-bearded Lt-Gen Javed Nasir.
Our rendezvous with our present extremist-flowing troubles did not come about from out of the blue. We had ploughed the land and watered it for a long time.
...
But Afghanistan was bad enough by itself. It reignited the fires of holy war and, given the iron dictates of geography, it was inevitable that Pakistan sooner or later would have its hands burned by another conflict raging in Afghanistan.
...
But now that under a new sun and a new sky we are finally embarked upon a new course -- which marks a true break with the past -- we have to realise the extent and magnitude of the problem. The terrorism we are now fighting is not a provincial subject. It is not confined to any one province. It is a composite whole, organically tied together, growing not from any isolated virus but from a sickness of the mind and soul which had the whole of Pakistan, or at least its strategic quartermasters, in its grip.
If Pakistan is to become something, realising its dreams and potential, if it has to enter the real world and leave the world of dreams and fantasies behind, then there is no course open to it except to tackle this sickness, no matter what it takes and what sacrifices it entails, without ifs and buts, and without any misconceived appeals to the Taliban.
Email: [email protected]
And if this goes on for a few years, MMS may end up being asked to meet their Under Secretary in the Ministry for International Aid 
