Shades of 1996

In the barely three weeks since my last post on this blog, the (Pakistani Pashtun) Taliban have taken over both the important Swat and Shangla Districts, of N.W.F.P. This reminds one of 1996 when we were regaled regularly with news updates like: "Jalalabad falls to the rapidly advancing Taliban..." and "Kabul finally falls to the Taliban..." Now they are HERE, at last: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Excuse my laugh, folks. It is indeed funny to see that the shit has hit the fan, and Pakistanis are bad losers indeed! Their Punjabi and Punjabified Pashtun army generals must be soiling their pants with their spicy excrement, as they contemplate their fate. They never thought "it" would happen to them. They always thought that come what may, they would always "have it going" for them.... Some of their renegade comrades are no doubt behind these recent Jihadi gains. The style of the takeovers is the same, but unlike Afghanistan it is unlikely that - except for the Pashtun lands - all of Pakistan will fall to them, but even those areas are enough, for Pakistan will cease to exist per se when they are captured. The police and administrations are abandoning towns and villages in these areas en masse and without resistance - just as had happened in Afghanistan in the mid-90s; Pakistani flags are being cast down and replaced with the Taliban's "pure" white banner; the nervous Americans are seen overflying Peshawar and the other areas regularly with their P-3C Orion spy planes, not that this will do them much good. And elites always seem to suffer from a strange historical disease when their end is nigh: here in Peshawar's dust and soot laden air where it hasn't rained for two months, the typically extravagant Indian style Pashtun weddings and drunken revelries pervade the local "Islamic" elite's activities with gusto; perhaps they want to "go out" with a "bang", you know. And as usual, "civilised"people are more concerned with irrelevant issues like Pakistan's so-called "State of Emergency" rule. Discussing rubbish like this is like a welcome escape from the approaching storm on the horizon. As Pakistan and its corrupt establishment dodder in their final swoon, people are instead "elaborately" and most "educatedly" engaged in analysing the latest bark of one corrupt politician dog against the other in the general melee of the collapsing old order. TV channels and digital decoders have been banned under Musharraf's "Emergency" to make the end more palatable. Ah well, can't do anything about that folks, tragic as it is indeed....