Better than it could have in a Ludlum or a John LeCarre thriller.

The story was being read all these years, the characters and events were unfolding slowly, methodically, without apparent connections or relations to each other.

And once it happened, all  events / characters / thoughts / ideas fell into place with the rapidity of a digital jigsaw puzzle being solved in auto-mode, with pieces seen/remembered/thought of earlier sliding into their respective places and forming a complete picture.

The world, beyond all doubt, understood in the space of the last three days that Pakistan and Taliban are truly one, and that one is not different from the other.

These thoughts did cross the mind of many over so many years, through unexplainable sixth sense or predictability fundas. But there was always a link here or an event there, that was missing in the world terror map. These seemingly unrelated links and events erected a friend or foe maze, peppered with cleverly disguised, even hidden markers, a maze confounded by contradictions ranging across extremes, and of a face put forward that was not a face at all but a mask!

I personally saw inklings of this for the first time, when the Dictatorship, Army driven functioning, of Pakistan was replaced with a “civilian” one. This obviously happened “around” the time the favoured daughter of the Pakistani soil, Ms. Bhutto was assassinated.

It was then that I kind of understood that the true forces that puppeteered Pakistan were calling for a show of hands.

Mumbai 26/11 happened, a war like stance was assumed, belligerent Paki threats tried to draw a raring to go India to war, to mask this as a “this happened while we were away protecting our borders” thing, the Taliban publicly announced its support for the Paki army to fight any Jihad against Indian armed forces, and then, SWAT happened.

Times Now (a channel that I seem to have come to admire for lotsa reasons) made some pointed remarks yesterday in a newscast in the nite:

1. That a British media has gone ahead to say that Obama favoured a Pakistan – “Moderate” Taliban link to weed out “extremist” Taliban, this would apparently lead to a “compartmentalization” and easy “management of terror”
2. It was also drawn attention to the fact, that this “peace agreement” happened barely a day or two after Sentaor Richard Holbrooke met Pakistani “leaders”.
3. (Amazingly, its just around this time that) A UCLA professor has tracked Osama to a hideout, in the Kurram region of Pakistan, not more than a dozen Kms from the Pak Afghan border.

Today, the Taliban is just less than 500 kms away from Amritsar, India. Officially. Not counting all the infiltrations they may have made into India under various garbs, guises and so on. What is really scary is that the euphoria among people to welcome a Taliban there is high, and dissent against various extreme Talibal Sharia Laws are few and far between. After all, the US has allowed that Sharia law is permitted as per Pak constitution and norms. How extreme, is up to the People of Pakistan to agree to or be forced into.

What does SWAT mean to us, to India?

1. I find it mighty strange to believe that the Pakistan Army, that just recently promised to launch a HUGE offensive if India declared war, caved into a few hundred or even thousand hooligans called the Taliban. So there is much, much more that the Indian army will need to address rather than just the Pak army, if war (God forbid) is declared.
2. That a war may not be necessarily an Indian offensive, it may be declared by a “high on Jihad with Taliban” Pak too.
3. That the US might not step in to curb such events, given as per reports on media that it actually “favours a Pak-Taliban Truce”.
4. That a major amount of threat exists within India too from the Taliban, who may have penetrated and infiltrated various areas, sections of the country. And that WE, THE PEOPLE, must be ready and on alert to attend to and quell such inside worries.
5. And last but not the least, Pak’s Nuclear Facilities can easily be taken over by these forces. Pak doesn’t seem to have either the will or the verve to prevent this.

And herein, within point 5, lies the TRUE threat for not only India, but the World too, and this WORLD includes countries and agencies who at the moment, are funding/siding with Pakistan and Taliban for their overall immediate/near future geo-political gains.

Sanjeev Sarma