The assassination of Punjab's Governor Salman Taseer on Tuesday has come as a grim reminder of how Pakistan continues to sink deeper into the quagmire of violent Islamism with the so-called civilian Government clearly at a loss as to how to prevent the country from imploding. With each passing day, the news out of Pakistan gets increasingly worse: The PPP Government in Islamabad, tottering on the brink of collapse, is desperately trying to retain power; the Army bosses in Rawalpindi, led by Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, are busy conspiring with the Taliban and Al Qaeda against the US; suicide bombers are having a field day, blowing themselves up in crowded markets and food aid centres; jihadis of all shades are running free and wild without any fear of being restrained, leave alone punished; ISI-sponsored terrorist groups, including the Laskhar-e-Tayyeba, and criminals like Hafiz Mohammed Saeed are not only flourishing but fattening themselves on state largesse; and, murder and mayhem have become a feature of daily life in a country over whose affairs nobody seems to be in either command or control. Flush with US aid dollars and armed to the teeth with American weapons, the men in khaki who pretend to be the real rulers of Pakistan are in reality pathetic caricatures of tin soldiers whose bluff and bluster impresses only their orderlies, although some would doubt even that. Just how bad the situation is can be gauged from the fact that Salman Taseer was killed by his own bodyguard who is member of Pakistan's elite commando force.
What makes Salman Taseer's assassination particularly abominable is the fact that he has been killed for supporting the scrapping of Pakistan's odious blasphemy law, a legacy of Gen Zia-ul-Haq's era of Islamisation. Strange as it may seem, Gen Zia was a protege of the Americans who was liberally funded by the US to wage jihad against the USSR. The wages of that sin are now being reaped by Americans and Pakistanis; others are suffering on account of US folly and Pakistani fanaticism. The monster bred and raised by Pakistan has now begun to turn on its master: It's an indisputable fact that more Pakistanis than anybody else have been killed by blood-thirsty Pakistanis driven by a macabre ideology steeped in hatred towards all, including their own co-religionists and fellow citizens. By no means does this mitigate the hideous crime of jihadbut it does serve to highlight, though not for the first time, that Pakistan remains the epicentre of violent Islamism that manifests itself in terrorism. Salman Taseer's killer, like all assassins, has sought to justify his misdeed — he has done so by claiming to act in the name of Islam. So do all jihadis who loot and plunder, rape and wound, kill and maim, in Pakistan and beyond its border. Ironically, despite its own falling to Islamists' bullets, the PPP has been vociferous in defending both jihad and jihadis, best exemplified by its Government's refusal to punish the guilty men of 26/11. The PPP regime still claims that there is no "actionable evidence" to pin the blame of that massacre on Pakistanis. Along with others in Pakistan, it is welcome to persist with that fiction as evidence of Pakistani terrorists killing Pakistanis keeps on mounting, underscoring the ostrich-like attitude of that country's elite. Salman Taseer was no friend of India, but he was a loyal Pakistani. Like his colleagues in the PPP Government, he refused to read the writing on the wall. And paid for it.
