The Taliban Gain Ground in NWFP
Ironic. To all intents and purposes, the Pakistani government and ISI created and armed the Taliban in the 1990s. Now the beast is biting the hand that fed it.
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Taleban spread wings in Pakistan
Some in NWFP say the Pakistani military establishment has deliberately allowed the Taleban to expand their area of influence.
This, they say, provides the government with the argument that the Taleban phenomenon is a spontaneous development which is difficult to control in Pakistan as well as in Afghanistan.
NWFP Governor Ali Mohammad Jan Orakzai seemed to be arguing this way when he told journalists last month that the Taleban movement was "developing into some sort of a nationalist movement, a sort of liberation war against coalition forces".
But senior administration officials in Peshawar say the government is not colluding with Taleban.
Instead, they say, the government simply lacks the capacity to counter an increasingly aggressive Taleban force both on the border with Afghanistan, and in the provincially-administered Frontier Regions (FRs), those areas that separate the border tribal regions from NWFP.
