REPORTS that Sultan Ameer Tarar, aka Col Imam, a former ISI official and patron of the original mujahideen and later the Taliban in Afghanistan, has died have yet to be confirmed. However, the 'news' is an occasion to dwell on the complex, almost inscrutable world of militancy inside Pakistan, and particularly in the tribal areas. Col Imam — kidnapped last March along with Khalid Khwaja, who was killed in captivity last May, and British journalist Asad Qureshi, who was released later in 2010 — is no ordinary former ISI officer or jihad patron. Long-time observers of militancy in the region refer to Col Imam as the 'godfather of the Afghan Taliban', a member of the security establishment here who was intimately tied to and supportive of the indigenous force that swept through Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. In fact, so influential and well-connected is the former intelligence officer that there is disbelief in some quarters that anyone would be bold enough to kill him. Perhaps he has died of 'natural causes', the speculation goes, because no militant offshoot, no matter how rabid or ultra-ruthless, would dare invoke the wrath of Mullah Omar in such a manner.

Of course, the speculation over the nature of Col Imam's possible death itself raises an obvious question: why, then, was Col Imam held in captivity by militants operating in Fata since last March? Here lies an uncomfortable truth, at least for those still enamoured of the idea of 'non-state actors' possessing some 'strategic value': like Frankenstein's monster, what once made sense in laboratory conditions has proved to be a terrible, endless nightmare, unleashed in the real world. The militants who held Col Imam captive are believed to have demanded the release of 160 militants, apparently held by the Pakistani state in prisons and detention centres across the country. A militant benefactor being held by other militants as a bargaining tool for the release of yet other militants — this ought to be the stuff of fanciful fiction, but in Pakistan it has become terrifying, grotesque reality.

The questions, wheels within wheels and games inside games appear to be endless. Was Khwaja killed last year by the Punjabi Taliban because he was possibly lobbying the Fata/Pakhtun Taliban to turn on their new Punjabi allies? Did Khwaja or Col Imam 'know too much', code for other, possibly state, elements seeking to silence potential embarrassments? Qureshi, the British journalist, was released, but why and how? Will he reveal what he saw and heard while on his trip to North Waziristan? And what really is going on in North Waziristan Agency, which appears to be growing more inscrutable by the day?