... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf...
promised an accounting for every drop of innocent blood spilled by jihadi terrorists, we almost believed him.
Almost, but not quite. Rewind to a couple of years ago, before the massacre of schoolchildren at the Army Public School in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar
...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire.
, and we see a Nawaz Sharif in full foot-dragging mode. Restraining a military that was champing at the bit, he dragged out a doomed negotiation process that went nowhere. Its only function was to give the Taliban time to regroup.
And in his recent speech following the Lahore bloodbath, our prime minister seemed more sad than angry. In fact, he came across as a headmaster disappointed by a promising student. At times, he appeared to be delivering a lecture on Islamiat rather than issuing a rousing call to arms.
Not a word about the army action that was in full swing in Punjab
1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots....
even as he spoke to the nation. Indeed, there was nothing specific about what precisely his government was going to do in response to the atrocity. In short, he delivered the kind of vague, woolly speech he has been giving for much of his political career.
Actually, we could have done with a progress report on the National Action Plan to combat terrorism hammered out with a wide consensus after the December 2014 terror attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar. This plan called for the government to undertake a number of measures ranging from madressah reforms to cleansing our curricula of all their Lion of Islam content.
Needless to say, little action has been taken on most of the agreed items. The only institution that has made significant progress has been the military, although at the cost of many lives. And it has been Nawaz Sharif who, together with his brother Shahbaz, has blocked robust action against the Punjabi Taliban holed out in southern Punjab.
The reason for this reluctance is obvious: thus far, a policy of live and let live has governed the provincial and central governments’ attitude towards the Punjabi Taliban. But if you keep vipers as pets in your garden, don’t be surprised when they bite you.
Even after the Lahore carnage, Rana Sanaullah, a senior figure in the Punjab government, declared that there were no Taliban hideouts in his province. This flies in the face of intelligence reports and investigative stories filed by journalists. We remember all too well the sight of Sanaullah accompanying an Lion of Islam candidate on his election campaign a few years ago.
The point here is that until we can clearly identify the enemy, and go after him, his sense of immunity will only embolden him further. And as so many people have been saying here and in other media outlets, we need to drain the swamp of its poison if we are to destroy the nasty creatures infesting its depths.
This means a root-and-branch change in school and college curricula, and a clampdown on hate speech in mosques and TV chat shows. The financing of madressahs and so-called Islamic charities needs to be scrutinised, and the hate-filled ideology taught in most of our seminaries has to be removed.
This is a pretty tall order. Even Musharraf at the height of his considerable power flinched from taking on our holy mans and our religious parties. But as Ayaz Amir reminded us in a recent column in The News, Benazir Bhutto
... 11th Prime Minister of Pakistain in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996. She was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistain People's Party, who was murdered at the instigation of General Ayub Khan. She was murdered in her turn by person or persons unknown while campaigning in late 2007. Suspects include, to note just a few, Baitullah Mehsud, General Pervez Musharraf, the ISI, al-Qaeda in Pakistain, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who shows remarkably little curiosity about who done her in...
showed more spine than her male successors when she authorised Gen Babar to crack down on the MQM terror machine in the mid-1990s.
This was when dozens of tortured bodies were found in sacks, and the increasingly roundedAltaf Hussain
..The head of MQM in Pakistain, who has lived in London and hasn't laid eyes on Pakistain since Caesar made corporal. Judging from the size of him,he may be a Hutt...
’s hit-men held the city in an iron grip. Those of us who lived in Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
then recall those dark days with a shudder. The operation took a lot of political will, especially when the military establishment was hostile towards the PPP government at the time.
This only shows that what is lacking in Nawaz Sharif’s approach is conviction. He genuinely believes that the Taliban will leave Punjab alone provided they are allowed to carry out their activities without interference. But as we have seen in the Islamabad and Karachi dharnas, give our holy mans and their followers an inch and they’ll take a mile.
In both pro-Qadri protests, these faceless myrmidons sought to provoke the authorities into violent reaction, thereby causing casualties that would further inflame the mobs. But by adopting this softly-softly approach, the federal, Sindh and Punjab governments have signalled a weakness that will be exploited in the future.
This style of sit-in politics was pioneered by Imran Khan
... aka
Taliban Khan, who ain't the brightest knife in the national drawer...
and Tahirul Qadri
...Pak politician, and would-be dictator, founder and head of Tehreek-e-Minhajul Quran and Pakistain Awami Tehrik. He usually resides in Canada, but returns to Pakistain periodically to foam at the mouth and lead demonstrations. Depending on which way the wind's blowing, Qadri claims to be the author of Pak's blasphemy law. Other times he says it wasn't him...
when they dragged out their protests before parliament for weeks. Despite the destruction of public property, the government showed great restraint, setting the stage for the recent round of dharnas.
Perhaps Nawaz Sharif should just abdicate the fight against terror to the army chief.
Sirajuddin Haqqani
Hafiz Saeed Khan Orakzai
Sheikh Khalid Haqqani
Sheikh Maqbool Orakzai
Commander Abdul Jabbar
He has previously headed the "
Also known as "Sajna", he leads one of the more influential Mehsud factions of the Taliban.
Formerly a technician with the Pakistain Air Force (PAF), he was convicted as one of the planners behind an 
Editor of 'Ihyae Khilafat', Jamatul Ahrar's monthly magazine.
Former TTP commander who maintains a strong footprint in Peshawar and adjoining areas.
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Wazoo
[DAWN] In certain national security circles, the renunciation of violence inside Pakistain by the leader of the TTP Punjab aka the 
Zawahiri