Are the Taliban Marching to the Capital in Pakistan?

[Nickdfresh]

Pakistan teetering on the brink of civil war?

Pakistan troops rush to Taliban-infiltrated area
Police officer killed as Clinton warns Islamabad to focus on Islamist threat
msnbc.com news services
updated 12:54 p.m. ET, Thurs., April 23, 2009

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Pakistani troops rushing to protect government buildings and bridges in a Taliban-infiltrated district just 60 miles from the capital were met with gunfire Thursday that killed one police officer, authorities said.

It was not immediately clear if the gunmen were Taliban militants, but the clash in Buner district is likely to heighten concern about the viability of a government-backed peace deal with the Taliban in northwest Pakistan.

The deal imposes Islamic law in a large segment of the country's northwest in exchange for peace with Taliban militants in the neighboring Swat Valley.

In recent days, the valley's militants have entered Buner in large numbers — establishing checkpoints, patrolling roads and spreading fear. Their movement has bolstered critics' claims that the deal would merely embolden the militants to spread their reign to other parts of the province bordering Afghanistan.

Some Pakistani politicians who pushed the government to enforce sharia law in Swat have even begun expressing worries about the growing clout of the Taliban.

"If the Taliban continue their advances at the current pace they will soon be knocking at the doors of Islamabad," Fazl-ur-Rehman, head of the Jamiat-e-ulema-e-Islam, the country's largest Islamic party, told parliament on Wednesday.

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[hideyoursheep]

Like cockroaches....:mad:

[Blaze]

I don't know, just Reading the part of the article you posted, I see a number of contradictions.... seems like the scary spaghetti monster threat

[Nickdfresh]

Taliban-style justice stirs growing anger
Sharia system in Swat being perverted, Pakistanis say
By Pamela Constable
The Washington Post
updated 11:19 a.m. ET, Sun., May 10, 2009

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - When black-turbaned Taliban fighters demanded in January that Islamic sharia law be imposed in Pakistan's Swat Valley, few alarm bells went off in this Muslim nation of about 170 million.

Sharia, after all, is the legal framework that guides the lives of all Muslims.

Officials said people in Swat were fed up with the slow and corrupt state courts, scholars said the sharia system would bring swift justice, and commentators said critics in the West had no right to interfere.

Today, with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing Swat and Pakistani troops launching an offensive to drive out the Taliban forces, the pendulum of public opinion has swung dramatically. The threat of "Talibanization" is being denounced in Parliament and on opinion pages, and the original defenders of an agreement that authorized sharia in Swat are in sheepish retreat.

'Victims of ignorant cavemen'
The refugees are the "victims of ignorant cavemen masquerading as fighters of Islam," columnist Shafqat Mahmood charged in the News International newspaper Friday. He said that the "barbarian horde" that invaded Swat never intended to implement a sharia-based judicial system and that they just used it as cover. "This is a fight for power, not Islam," he wrote.

Such widely expressed views make a clear and careful distinction between the Taliban version of Islam -- often described as narrow-minded, intolerant and punitive -- and what might be called the mainstream Pakistani version of Islam, which is generally described as moderate and flexible.
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