Release of the Pashtun knot

After the war ends in Sri Lanka, it is the Pashtun region of Southasia that will remain the most violent corner on earth. The depredations of the Taliban and al-Qaeda are set to continue, and new US President Barack Obama stepped into the White House with promises to withdraw from Iraq but get deeper into Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Obama intention is clearly to deal with the threat posed by al-Qaeda once and for all, so we should stand prepared for blunderbuss military action, drone attacks and extra-territoriality in crossborder forays. All of which will deliver more suicide bombers, assassinations and the collapse of fragile civilian regimes. It is important to consider the US involvement not as a fait accompli expanded, but rather to question whether the pain and dislocation in northwestern Southasia is justified by the Western interest.

The Pashtun region on the two sides of the Durand Line harbours the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, as well as non-Taliban militants. None of these, meanwhile, have anything in common with the secular and the Sufi, which are an intrinsic part of the local heritage. This is the region of Abdul Gaffar Khan, the Frontier Gandhi, who resolutely rejected the Subcontinent's partition on the basis of religion. The Pashtun hills and valleys are replete with the history of mendicants who sought an inclusive spiritual rather than ritualistic path to attainment.