Thursday, April 30, 2009

The myth of Talibanistan

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

"The Taliban's activities in Buner in Pakistan - which prompted a sharp response from the military - have raised concern over the country to the level of hysteria; that it is about to fall to an army of turbans. This is not going to happen. What is happening is that the United States, to legitimize the next stage in the Af-Pak war, is creating a new uber-bogeyman - Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud......

Now there's a US$5 million price on Baitullah's head. The Predators have duly hit the Mehsud family's South Waziristan bases. But - curioser and curioser - not once but twice, the ISI forwarded a detailed dossier of Baitullah's location directly to its cousin, the Central Intelligence Agency. But there was no drone hit.

And maybe there won't be - especially now that a bewildered Zardari government is starting to consider that the previous uber-bogeyman, a certain Osama bin Laden, is no more than a ghost. Drones can incinerate any single Pashtun wedding in sight. But international bogeymen of mystery - Osama, Baitullah, Mullah Omar - star players in the new OCO (overseas contingency operations), formerly GWOT ("global war on terror"), of course deserve star treatment."

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