http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htwin/articles/20100719.aspx
When Reality Gets Too Close July 19, 2010: The Pakistani Taliban have lost their popularity. A year ago, when the government agreed to a truce with the Taliban in the tribal territories, 80 percent of the population approved. Until recently, most Pakistanis backed the Taliban's support of the war in Afghanistan, against "foreign troops" and their "puppet government." Pakistani media made much of Indian aid to the Afghan government. Despite billions of dollars in American economic and military aid to Pakistan, the Pakistani media found the public could not get enough of anti-American stories. Most of this reporting was fiction, largely based on conspiracy theories that the U.S. was at war with Islam and working with India to destroy Pakistan. The sad fact was that Pakistan's problems were all homemade. This included corruption, illiteracy, abuse of women, persecution of ethnic and religious minorities and support for Islamic terrorism in general. But after the Taliban got their truce in the tribal territories, they proceeded to persecute the people they controlled to such a horrific extent that most Pakistanis were truly horrified. This despite the fact that the Taliban were acting just like the Afghan Taliban did in the 1990s, and the Iranian Islamic dictatorship has been doing for decades. Something snapped among Pakistanis, and now approval of the Taliban is under ten percent. Many Pakistanis (perhaps a quarter) still back the application of Islamic law to solve the country's problems, but the actual use of these Islamic radical ideas is much less popular. Nothing like seeing this stuff in action (stoning women to death, banning video, music and dancing) to change your attitudes. It's still considered acceptable to support Islamic terrorism in India, or to kill American soldiers. But not as much. As happened in Iraq, reality trumps fantasy when reality gets too close. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [email protected]. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [email protected] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtmlYahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
