Life under the Taliban

LONDON: This is with reference to Hamna Zubair’s Speaker’s Corner article ‘The terror trap’ (June 12). Perhaps the writer should go and spend a day in parts of Fata under the occupation of al Qaeda and the Taliban. Or spend a day with the hundreds of widows whose husbands have been killed by the Taliban. I wonder if she would be asking for the same strategy for dealing with the Taliban were they occupying Punjab or Sindh. I am afraid the writer comes as an apologist for the Taliban. Are Pakhtuns under the occupation of Taliban not deserving of protection by the Pakistani state?

Published in the Express Tribune, June 14^th, 2010.