The blessings of Taliban

A group that once was admired by so many Pakistanis, heaped praise, given justification, and even looked up to as a model, finds itself on a slippery slope whose descent is bound to make the appeal muddier and muddier.

But the cancer of Taliban and their ideology has unleashed several positive movements that were both expected and surprisingly unexpected. Two of being:

1) The emergence of the Taliban cancer forced Pakistanis to think long and hard about what was in store for them if they didn't work to reform their judicial system. While the judicial movement had other catalysts and the movement turned into a tide for other reasons, the cancer of the Taliban ideology has cemented the awareness that without reforming the judicial system, the people will be left having to contend with fascist and archaic systems.

and surprisingly,

2) At a sitting with a friend from Quetta who has several businesses in the city, we began to discuss the anti-Punjabi feelings of Baluchistan. Apparently, he claimed, although the "anti-Punjabi" slogans had begun by the Pushtuuns, after emergence of the Taliban in FATA, the slogan no longer holds much value among the Pushtuuns. The slogan has plenty of resonance among the Baloch tribes of course, but due to the Pakistan Army aggressively taking an anti-Taliban stance, the Pushtuuns in Quetta and Balochistan have become pro-Pakistan. The feeling and thinking is, that only the Pakistan Army can deal the necessary blow to the Taliban.

It's surprising in that it took a cancer like the Taliban to bridge at least one ethnic divide.