Yes TTP, you can kill the Pashtuns

It’s your gift for not bombing Punjab

After the overwhelming success of the ‘Good Taliban, Bad Taliban’ circus, we are now experiencing a new merry-go-round: Good Sharia, Bad Sharia. Just like both Good Taliban and Bad Taliban look uncannily similar, it is the same for Good Sharia and Bad Sharia. However, while the debate surrounding Good/Bad Taliban and Good/Bad Sharia continues to take up most of the newspaper space and on-air time all over the country, what is increasingly clear is that the entire country is mulling over an issue that is relevant to only one part of the state (if one can be audacious enough to dub it that) – FATA.

As the government and the Taliban negotiation teams brought apples and oranges to the table respectively eying to make banana trifle, what the government clarified from the onset was that whatever the Taliban are planning on cooking they were going to have to restrict their gastronomic activities to FATA. Basically that means whether the Taliban are good or bad and whether their Sharia is good or bad, it is something that the Pashtuns – and them alone – would have to figure out. And soon.

As the government and the Taliban negotiation teams brought apples and oranges to the table respectively eying to make banana trifle, what the government clarified from the onset was that whatever the Taliban are planning on cooking they were going to have to restrict their gastronomic activities to FATA.

And so, if TTP’s (Good/Bad) Sharia directed them to bomb the entire country, they will have to make do with bombing the Pashtuns alone – for the time being any way.

The Taliban on their part have been cooperative enough and reciprocated by demanding that all law enforcing forces be removed from their new play place. FATA is going to be the Taliban’s small gift for not bombing Punjab. The Saudi Crown Prince has been kind enough to bring the wrapping papers.

So while the Baloch continue to be butchered by those who must not be named, Karachi being made a hub of violence by those who can be, but won’t be named, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa being regularly bombed by those who we have just named, it is Punjab that would remain free of Sharia compliant bombs. That is what we have been negotiating with the Taliban over the past few weeks: the Good/Bad Sharia remains in FATA and so does the butchery that it causes.

So while the Baloch continue to be butchered by those who must not be named, Karachi being made a hub of violence by those who can be, but won’t be named, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa being regularly bombed by those who we have just named, it is Punjab that would remain free of Sharia compliant bombs. That is what we have been negotiating with the Taliban over the past few weeks: the Good/Bad Sharia remains in FATA and so does the butchery that it causes.

And it is a perfect deal to be very honest for someone who lives in Lahore and has all their interests in this city. Like this scribe for instance, or the prime minister of the Deobandi Republic of Pakistan.

Now to facilitate this Sharia experiment in FATA, there is a narrative that had to be proliferated in the media. That the Pashtuns are these antediluvian, radical people who seamlessly fit into the Taliban persona like Christian Bale fits into the Batsuit. The said narrative has been proliferated rather well, if the reverberations among the Pakistani “intelligentsia” are anything to go by. And it bins the Pashtuns’ ideological history into Pakistan’s theological garbage can.

The Pashtuns have been the ones to suffer the most courtesy the Taliban, and after TTP’s political wing the PTI came into power in KP, the numbers have risen to unprecedented heights. Therefore, a people that has collectively suffered the most shouldn’t have any qualms if it were to suffer a little more. I mean the Pashtuns are born Islamists, it’s only logical that they bear the brunt of Islamism.

Also there is talk that Saudi Arabia is looking for a 100,000 acre area to establish its stranglehold in the country – as if it didn’t have that already. Now once FATA is gifted to Saudi Arabia’s offspring, the Saudi stranglehold would obviously be adjacent to FATA as well.

Also there is talk that Saudi Arabia is looking for a 100,000 acre area to establish its stranglehold in the country – as if it didn’t have that already. Now once FATA is gifted to Saudi Arabia’s offspring, the Saudi stranglehold would obviously be adjacent to FATA as well. This would create this Islamist zone in the north west of Pakistan, which would gulp the entire Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Inshallah), especially since TTP’s blood brothers rule the roost in KP’s parliament. Once the Saudis with Audis establish themselves in town, there won’t be any Good Sharia or Bad Sharia, there would be just the one Sharia: THE Sharia – the one the Saudis have established in their own kingdom.

That’s pretty much the deal between the Raiwind Republic and Saudi Kingdom. And it’s the Pashtuns that are the first ones to be sacrificed at the altar of the Taliban. So yes TTP, you can kill all the Pashtuns you want. It’s your gift for not bombing Punjab.