See also: www.southasiaanalysis.org
"The Obama Administration's policy of showering Pakistan with money and arms and ammunition even in the absence of proof of sincerity and conviction and even in the absence of progress on the ground is once again creating a worrisome impression in the Pakistani leaders that to continue to benefit from US support and largesse all they have to do is to create an illusion of motion without actual movement. That is what they are doing. That is what Pervez Musharraf did when he was the President.
The two Waziristans came under the effective control of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and their associates and the Neo Taliban of Afghanistan, operating from sanctuaries in Balochistan, staged its spectacular come-back in Afghanistan when he was the President and was the beneficiary of billions of dollars given by the Bush Administration. What promises he made to the Bush Administration to reform and modernise the madrasas and prevent their misuse for jihad! How much money he took from the US for madrasa reforms! What happened to those reforms? That is exactly what Zardari, Gilani and Kayani are doing now. Creating an illusion of motion without actual movement, while extracting billions of dollars from the US. The Pakistani leadership---political and military--- has developed into a fine art the extraction of money from the US by exploiting the presence of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in their territory. If the Taliban ultimately succeeds in further strengthening and expanding its control in Pakistan, the US will have to share a major portion of the responsibility for failing to make Pakistan act effectively instead of merely seeming to do so. "
2. So I wrote in my article of May 22,2009, titled "Pak Army's Taliban Hunt: Seeming Motion Without Movement"
3. Responsible people in Pakistan have started doubting the claims of the Pakistan Army about the progress being made by it in its operations against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Even its claims of having killed over 1500 members of the Pakistani Taliban in the Swat Valley of the North-West Frontier Province are now being doubted because the Pakistan Army has not produced any evidence in support of its claims. Had the Army really killed so many members of the Taliban, there should have been mass graves in that area. The Army has not been able to produce the dead bodies of those killed---nor has it been able to indicate where the hundreds of dead bodies of the killed Taliban were buried.Not one of the important leaders has been killed or captured.
4. For the first time, a responsible member of Pakistan's strategic analysts community----- Zafar Hilaly, a retired officer of the Pakistan Foreign Service--- has reflected in an article published by the "News" of June 24,2009, the nagging skepticism about the reliability of the claims of the Army. A copy of his article can be read here
The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.
