On the Pashtun character of the Taliban

Like many other subjects, this is also one the truth of which has become tainted with crass political jostling and hypocritical motives of the various "players" involved from the very start.....there are those interests who wish to blame Pashtuns for everything at one end, and then there are those apologists who wish to paint the Pashtun character as 100% angelic and 100% victimised. I speak not as an enemy of the Pashtuns, but as a Pashtun reformer himself, not a two-cent worth politician, who wants to plaster over something rotten in pastel colours, so that it looks nice to the world... For me, the truth is bitter, yet it is the best....that is the first correct step. The matter isn't as simple as most, both for and against, wish to present it...for their own interests. My calling Taliban as a product of "modern Wahhabi Pushtunwali" is in no way supportive of the Pakistani state's Punjabi strategic depth nonsense; it is the recognition of a fact that may not be palatable to many idealists. I, for one, do not represent the nonsense called Pakistan or its warped projects in any sense! And I desire an independent and modern Pashtun national concept....and have been doing so for 25 years now.... But, unfortunately, the Taliban phenomenon are not that alien to our Pashtun society, as in the past 15-20 years it has undergone several basic transformations - the major one among these being the incapacitation of its old British-Indian + Pakistani veneer, with the slowly but constantly growing influence of Wahhabi Islam, of which the Taliban are the local political corollary....Gallup or other opinion polls can not be taken as reliable influences in this case, as their methods of assessment and quantification take into account sampling procedures and analytical techniques that are rendered erroneous due to several factors too lengthy to dwell upon here.....

None of the contentions we now see doing the rounds concerning the true nature of the Taliban, are true. The Taliban were at first a Pakistani establishment engineered outgrowth meant for Afghanistan, that was grafted onto Afghan Pashtun society - but which quickly began to take root in it on both sides of the Durand Line, and assume a momentum of its own to become a new, and grassroots form of traditional Pashtun nationalism for the deprived and lower class, rural masses of our society. All this was taking place while this growth was being watered by the ISI....but the increasing corruption and dysfunction of Pakistan's ruling elites in the 1990s following their jihadi victory over Najibullah, caused their bankruptcy and decrepitude that created not only a huge gulf between them and their society, but also caused an overall breakdown in state services, governability and the provision of justice, whereby the populace, according to its cultural genius and outlook began to look towards such elements as the Taliban for empirical stability and provision of justice according to their own uneducated and rural/tribal outlook, with whom they could also culturally and religiously identify; this also slowly resulted in the encroachment of Wahhabi Islamic doctrines...the killing of the Maliks and Khans now so promnently being done, is because they are identified with the old British Indian - Pakistani neocolonial state system already in place, that is tottering due to its own corrupt decrepitude; moreover that was a system identified with the hated old elites, and not the new rich tribal smugglers, international traders and "Dubai driver" classes of petty bourgeois Pashtuns that is now on the ascendant, and is supporting these Taliban elements. Although they hate the old Khan and Malik elites, these upstarts still identify most enthusiastically with Pakhtunwali - rather more than the old Khans of the British Indian + Pakistani system did....and it is this new form of Wahhabi Pakhtunwali that is now taking the place of the old elitist Pakhtunwali...Pakhtunwali in general is a very backward and rigidly extremist tribal-feudal code that prevailed until now in the rural areas, but thanks to 160 years of British Indian and then Pakistani influence, was minimal in the cities - but it is now starting to permeate the whole society once again in this revived Wahhabi form. It is as bad as Wahhabism itself, and as I said above - has complemented it.... It must be decried strongly by all Pashtuns who are truly progressive; and no condoning of it on any lame excuse of nationalism can be excused or tolerated.....