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 Now, as Pakistan reels in horror at the bloodshed in a
military-run high school in Peshawar city on Tuesday, pressure will
mount on politicians and generals who have long been tolerant of
militants they counted as strategic assets in their rivalry with
India and jostle for influence in Afghanistan.
"There have been national leaders who been apologetic about the
Taliban," said Sherry Rehman, a former envoy to Washington and
prominent opposition politician. "People will have to stop
equivocating and come together in the face of national tragedy."
Outrage over the killing of so many children is likely to seriously
erode sympathy for militants in a country where many people have
long been suspicious of the U.S.-led "war on terror", and spur the
army to intensify an offensive it launched this year on havens in
mountains along the Afghan border.
Army chief Raheel Sharif has already signaled that retaliation would
follow. On Wednesday, Mubasher Lucman, a prominent host on the ARY
news channel, Tweeted: "Enough time already. Tell Air Chief to
initiate carpet bombing".
 "The Taliban may be trying to slacken the resolve of the military by
suggesting that there could be a tremendous human costs to the
military offensive and create public pressure on the military to
back off from this offensive," said Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns
Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
"But it may actually ricochet on them," said Nasr, formerly a State
Department adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Pakistan's Taliban, whose nominal unity has frayed this year with
the emergence of competing factions, are distinct from the Afghan
Taliban. But the groups are linked, and share the goals of toppling
their respective governments and setting up a strict Islamist state
across the region.
PRESSURE ON GOVERNMENT
Widening the offensive against the Pakistan Taliban could include
"hot pursuit" by the military across the porous border into
Afghanistan, where many Pakistani militants hide. That could put at
risk a recent rapprochement between Islamabad and Kabul.
Pakistan's Dawn newspaper quoted a source as saying that the school
attackers were acting on orders from handlers in Afghanistan.
"They have been asking the Afghan government to do something about
this for a very long time ... Pakistan may be left with no other
option – the brutality of the attack demands a response," said
Saifullah Mehsud, head of the FATA Research Center in Islamabad,
referring to the Peshawar carnage.
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Despite the risks, public outrage means the army now has a freer
hand to go after the Taliban, entrenching its dominance over a
government that pursued fruitless peace talks with the militants and
offered only half-hearted support for a military offensive.
The civilian government is already on a backfoot, weakened by months
of street demonstrations led by opposition leaders calling for the
resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Now, it will come under
pressure to fall in line with the military. "Pakistan's political
leadership needs to make a clear choice to fight the Taliban
decisively, not with half measures," said Bruce Riedel, a former
senior CIA and White House counter-terrorism official, now the
Brookings Institution think-tank.
"The burden is on Prime Minister Sharif to show he can unite the
country to defend its children," he said.
Pakistan has for years nurtured militants in the belief they could
be valuable fighters in the event of war with a much bigger Indian
army. But some factions turned on government forces after Islamabad
signed up to the U.S.-led campaign against militancy following the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Even if the army and government close ranks on the need to hit back
and tighten security in the country's cities, however, the military
and its powerful intelligence arm are likely to cling to the notion
of "good" Taliban.
An Indian official, who has dealt for years with New Delhi's
policies in the region, said that with NATO troops leaving
Afghanistan, the Pakistani military would leave unhindered the
Haqqani network that strikes inside Afghanistan from Pakistan and
the Lashkar-e-Taiba group that fights Indian rule in Kashmir.
"The Pakistan army has adhered to its longstanding doctrine of
distinguishing between terrorist groups that are engaged in
hostilities with it and those who are willing to act as its proxies
whether in Afghanistan and India," said Vivek Katju, a former Indian
ambassador to Afghanistan.
"Pakistan ... cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hound," he
wrote in India's Economic Times.
(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in WASHINGTON and Sanjeev
Miglani in NEW DELHI; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Robert
Birsel)
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