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Indian Defence Minister A.K. Antony on Friday said that Taliban was a threat to the world peace. Antony said that India has been trying to impress upon Pakistan to take more proactive actions to ban the Taliban.

Elaborating more on India's ongoing process based on the security scenario, he also assured about the implementation of all kinds of required measures.

President Asif Ali Zardari today responded to a spate of deadly terrorist attacks that have killed dozens across Pakistan by pledging to continue his government's fight against militancy till the end. Addressing the nation a little after 1 am on national television, Zardari said, "We will continue this fight till the end.

This fight is backed by the parliament, the political parties and the people of Pakistan". Noting that recent suicide attacks by terrorists, including Tuesday's bombing of the Pearl Continental hotel in Peshawar, had killed members of the armed forces and civilians, he said: "We must win this war at all costs.

We will win with the help of the people. "There will be a new morning and we will all see this morning.

It will be the victory of the people," he said, adding that the "whole country has risen up against the terrorists". Pakistan is fighting "those who want to impose their agenda forcefully on the nation," he said.

He pointed out that the militants had targeted his slain wife Benazir Bhutto shortly after her return to Pakistan from self-imposed exile in October 2007 and assassinated her two months later after "she challenged them and vowed to take them on".

Pakistan must move to the top of US strategic agenda to prevent Islamabad's nuclear arsenal from falling into the hands of Taliban, or worse, an extremist group that seized control of the government, a scholar has warned.

The 'second scenario (would give) international terrorists even greater access to Pakistan's nuclear capabilities, the risk of nuclear confrontation with India would also increase dramatically,' writes John R. Bolton in an article in the Wall Street Journal Monday.

President Barack Obama's endorsement of Pakistan's official position that it has secure control over its nuclear weapons arsenal is 'not reassuring in light of the Taliban's military and political gains throughout Pakistan', he said.

'Unless there is swift, decisive action against the Islamic radicals there, Pakistan faces two very worrisome scenarios,' wrote the former US ambassador to the UN, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

'One scenario is that instability continues to grow, and that the radicals disrupt both Pakistan's weak democratic institutions and the military,' Bolton said, with 'a tangible risk that several weapons could slip out of military control'.

'Such weapons could then find their way to Al Qaeda or other terrorists, with obvious global implications,' he said. But 'the second scenario is even more dangerous'.

'Instability could cause the constitutional government to collapse entirely and the military to fragment' and 'allow a well-organised, tightly disciplined group to seize control of the entire Pakistani government.

'Not only could this second scenario give international terrorists even greater access to Pakistan's nuclear capabilities, the risk of nuclear confrontation with India would also increase dramatically,' Bolton said.

'To prevent either scenario, Pakistan must move to the top of our strategic agenda, albeit closely related to Afghanistan,' he said, suggesting a strengthening of pro-American elements in Pakistan's military 'so they can purge dangerous Islamicists from their ranks and roll back Taliban advances'.

Obama's talks next week in Washington with presidents Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan provide a clear opportunity to take the hard steps necessary to secure Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and defeat the Taliban, Bolton said.

'Failure to act decisively could well lead to strategic defeat in Pakistan.'

Even as New Delhi expressed concern over their well-being, Pakistani Sikhs have said that the majority Muslims are also a target of the Taliban, and the issue is a "national" problem rather than a "communal" one. This follows reports that that the Taliban were displacing Sikhs and levying special taxes (jaziya) on them in Pakistan's northwest region.

"Eh maslaa sirf Sikhaan da nahin ae. Suba sarhad tay FATA wich musalmaan, jo ki aksariyat wich nay, ohna naal wi Taliban tushaddat kar rahey ney. (This is not a Sikh issue. The majority Muslims living in NWFP and FATA are also being tortured by the Taliban)," said Bishen Singh, the president of the Pakistan Sikh Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee.

Speaking to The Indian Express over the phone from Lahore, Singh added: "Please don't make it a political and international issue that only Sikhs are being targeted in Pakistan. That is completely untrue. The Muslims of the Taliban-infested areas are worse off than us and other minorities like the Hindus and Christians there. To tell the truth, we are safer than them because the Taliban know that our families have been living in the north for at least 300 years, so they are soft on us. They asked for the jaziya money and we paid them, whereas the Muslims are abducted and held to ransom. If the ransom is not paid, they are killed. Waheguru is kind that no Sikh was even touched while hundreds of Muslims have been killed."

Over 100 families are reported to have fled the region in the last fortnight. Pakistan's Evacuee Property Trust Board has launched relief operations, making living arrangements in prominent gurdwaras of the country.

The TNSM and the Taliban's Swat chapter have discarded the creation of Darul Qaza (Islamic courts) by the North West Frontier Province government.

"We reject this Darul Qaza and further consultation is on to discuss the future line of action," the TNSM's spokesperson Izzat Khan said.

Khan said TNSM's chief Sufi Muhammad was supposed to be consulted before making any final decision, but the government did not seek his views on the structure of the appeal courts.

"Any such decision under the shadow of a military operation is not acceptable to us," Taliban's Swat chapter spokesperson Muslim Khan said.

He asked the government to first discontinue the military operation and then appoint Qazis after consulting Sufi Muhammad.

Earlier, the North West Frontier Province government had announced the establishment of Darul Qaza (Islamic courts) in the Malakand region of the province.

Provincial Information Minister Iftikhar Hussain, while announcing the establishment of the regulation, urged the TNSM chief Sufi Muhammad to fulfill his part of the peace deal by asking the Taliban to lay down arms to establish peace in the region.

He said now that the government has fulfilled its promise, the Taliban should also abide by the peace accord, and clarified that the government would not hesitate in taking stern actions against those who challenge its writ.

Worried about the expanding writ of the Taliban in Pakistan, a former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, has said the Obama administration must seriously consider pulling out as many nuclear weapons as possible from Pakistan.

Bolton said such a step would certainly allay fears about the consequences of the Pakistan government caving to the Taliban.

He urged Obama to push for the issue during trilateral talks with Pakistan and Afghanistan next week.

"President Obama's talks next week in Washington with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan provide a clear opportunity to take the hard steps necessary to secure Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and defeat the Taliban," The Nation quoted Bolton, as saying.

Bolton emphasized the need of greater US assistance to both Pakistan and Afghanistan to counter the ever advancing extremists.

"We must strengthen pro-American elements in Pakistan's military so they can purge dangerous Islamicists from their ranks, roll back Taliban advances and, together with our increased efforts in Afghanistan, decisively defeat the militants on either side of the border," he added.

Bolton also highlighted the need to reduce the heightened tension between India and Pakistan, and pressurize Pakistan to put the disgraced scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan back under house arrest.

"We must strive to keep Indo-Pakistani relations stable, if not friendly, and pressure Islamabad to put nuclear-weapons proliferator and father of Pakistan's nuclear programme Abdul Qadeer Khan back under house arrest," he said.

The latest news from the Hindu Kush makes one thing painfully apparent: The Taliban/Al Qaeda jihadistani quasi state, 'Jihadistan Emirate', has achieved critical mass. It has now metastasized into a killer disease that threatens the survival of Pakistan's fragile democracy.

The decisive indication that coherent political integration has been achieved by the Taliban is their successful conquest of Swat. This initial incursion outside their montane territorial fortress now shows that Taliban/Al Qaeda can call the shots regarding subsequent targets. This is evident from their deliberate and systematic expansion from Swat into the contiguous portions of Malakand Division, commencing with Buner district.

What is striking is that they are undertaking the latter in blatant defiance of agreements that were ostensibly ratified between them and the Pakistani government. It is clear, in other words, that the Taliban/Al Qaeda leadership view understandings and agreements that have been made with government authorities in the course of their politico-military expansion purely in tactical terms.

They sense the weakness and paralysis of the Pakistani government, and its consequent willingness (nay eagerness!) to engage in political appeasement, as a golden opportunity to gradually overpower and gain control of the Pakistani state.

The signs are everywhere that the Taliban/Al Qaeda strategy is working, and the authority of the Pakistan government is gradually waning despite official assurances to the contrary. Pakistani officials insist that the situation is under control when all the evidence points in the opposite direction. When US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton alluded to the 'existential threat' to Pakistan's survival posed by the extremists, Pakistan's Ambassador in Washington, Husain Haqqani, replied that 'we do not have a situation in which the government or the country of Pakistan is about to fall to the Taliban.'

His statement exemplifies the state of denial the democratically elected government of Pakistan is in. Clearly, President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, and even army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani are in a state of paralytic inaction.

If one is searching for an analogy to what may be forthcoming from the Hindu Kush, in the face of the breakdown of popular government in Pakistan, it might not be far fetched to look no further than the Pol Pot phenomenon and the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. There are disturbing similarities between the two cases.

As the Khmer Rouge germinated and perfected their retrograde Maoist extremism in the remote jungle backwater of Cambodia, so the Taliban and Al Qaeda have honed their brand of doctrinal extremism and their accompanying organizational apparatus in the remote valleys of the Hindu Kush. As in the case of the Khmer Rouge, the Americans and the purportedly more advanced segments of Pakistani society at first took the extremists lightly, slighted them strategically, and indeed played political footsie with them until it became apparent that they were a serous threat.

When it seemed to then US secretary of state Henry Kissinger that the Khmer Rouge could be useful in opposing the North Vietnamese, in January 1968 the US Army helped the Khmer Rouge establish the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea, which materially strengthened them. Much as ISI and the CIA from time to time bolstered the Taliban when it seemed they might be of value to both countries' regional strategic interests.

There is another horror scenario waiting in the wings should a political collapse result in a 'Cambodian Moment' for Pakistan. A Taliban regime in Pakistan would not only tear at the social fabric of Pakistan and plunge millions of Pakistanis into fratricidal conflict, it would potentially place nuclear weapons in the hands of lunatics like Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar!

This would impose on US President Barack Obama a moral dilemma beyond anything he could have imagined or contemplated when he assumed office. The only option open to him would be to take out the Pakistani nuclear facility at Chagai Hills in much the same manner, but on a grander scale, than Israel did when it feared that Saddam Husain's Daura reactor near Baghdad would go critical by July or August of 1981.

The ramifications this would have for South Asia and indeed the entire world boggle the mind.

Yet this is a scenario whose occurrence cannot be dismissed as long as Pakistan's civil society acting through its elected secular government, in consonance with the United States and the UN, move decisively before it is too late.

Stepping up pressure on Pakistan to take concrete action against the Taliban, the US has given Islamabad two weeks time to eliminate the insurgents from its soil before Washington determines what it will do next.

General David Petraeus, who heads the US Central Command, has told US officials that the coming two weeks would be 'critical to determining whether the Pakistani government will survive', Fox News reported.

'The Pakistanis have run out of excuses' and are 'finally getting serious' about combating the threat from Taliban and Al Qaeda extremists operating out of the country's northwest, the general said.

Criticising Pakistan's attitude towards fighting the insurgents, Petraeus said 'we have heard it all before' that Pakistan was doing its best to eliminate the Taliban threat.

He said that he is looking forward to see concrete action by Islamabad in the next two weeks before determining the US' next course of action, which is presently set on propping up the Pakistani government and military with counter-insurgency training and aid.

Petraeus made these assessment in talks with lawmakers and Obama administration officials this week, the news channel reported, citing people familiar with the discussions.

The sources also told the channel that no one in Washington has an 'understanding of Taliban's true objective'.

It remains unclear to policymakers here whether the Taliban wants to overthrow the Zardari government or merely to carve out territory within Pakistan in which it can establish safe haven, impose Sharia law, and plot attacks against external targets.

With the Taliban gaining ground and establishing its writ in newer regions of Pakistan, the intense social and political changes that the country is witnessing could ultimately explode into a full blown Islamist revolution, experts believe.

The Obama Administration, which has expressed its concern over the precarious condition of Pakistan, has sent a host of top officials to Islamabad to discuss the issue, but it still remains unclear that whether Obama has a clear cut idea as to what he wants to do and achieve in Pakistan, vice-president of the Heritage Foundation Kim Holmes said.

Holmes, in an article, said that Washington must develop a more enhanced and logical and long term policy for the troubled state, safety of which is directly related to the safety and peace of South Asia, and even the US and Europe.

He warns that with such a volatile situation at hand, Obama must avoid making any false move, as it could have dire consequences in near future.

Reffering to the US role in defusing tension between President Zardari and former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during the recent political bedlam in the country, Holmes said Washington should not personalize politics in Pakistan, instead, it should pursue a consistent policy of supporting democratic institutions and processes in the country.

Furthermore, Pakistan may also want the US to get more directly involved in resolving the Kashmir dispute and to pressure India to make concessions. This would certainly damage the relationships between New Delhi and Washington.

Holmes said that any such attempt by the US, besides damaging relations would further destabilize the Kashmir region by raising false expectations and giving extremists reason to increase violence to push an agenda they believe in within their reach.