Revolution In The Pakistani Mountains

Asia Times Online

March 23, 2006

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - The Taliban have established a foothold in the Pakistani tribal areas of North and South Waziristan along the Afghanistan border, but it is not simply a question of their having marched in and established their writ.

Their ability to impose themselves, which is the result of a virtual revolution in the region, has far-reaching consequences for both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

News reports tend to focus on the renewed capabilities of the Taliban, in terms of their reorganization, their base in Pakistan,improved weaponry and their mass of suicide bombers. What is overlooked in the troubled tribal areas is an astonishing change in local dynamics, which neither the British Raj nor successive Pakistani or Afghan governments had been able to engineer, the ramifications of which threaten the existing order of the whole region.

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