WARS come in all shapes and sizes. There are cold wars and world wars; guerrilla wars and regional wars; wars to acquire resources and territory, and revolutionary wars.

Then there are religious wars. These are normally launched to gain ascendancy over a neighbour, and are garbed in faith. In the past, an ambitious king or priest would claim a heavenly revelation, commanding him to carry the word of a particular god to other lands. In these conflicts, all the parties involved are aware that they are at war.

Not so in Pakistan. Here, although Islamist zealots declared war on the state many years ago, many have fooled themselves into thinking that these fellow Muslims are engaged in a misguided campaign. In this view, the state must be patient, and refrain from retaliating. According to people like Imran Khan, military action will only worsen things. All we have to do, runs this refrain, is to keep turning the other cheek, and sooner or later, our tormentors will see the error of their ways.

Unable to believe their luck, the jihadis have treated Pakistan’s citizens and its security forces like clay pigeons, slaughtering tens of thousands, and grabbing control of wide swathes of territory. In the face of this bloody campaign, the state has responded with all the ferocity of a rabbit frozen in the headlights of an oncoming car.

Elevated to the status of equal partners in negotiations, the insurgents have through informal channels been conveying their terms: accept their stone-age vision of Islamic rule, ban modern education, hand over the tribal areas, etc. In short, we are being asked to return to the seventh century.

Just to keep us firmly on the path to abject surrender, they continue their campaign of murder and mayhem as negotiations go on. Predictably, when they deny being behind a particular attack, their many apologists accept these declarations of innocence. According to them, these criminals can kill indiscriminately, use young girls as suicide bombers, and behead prisoners, but are absolutely incapable of lying when it suits them.

And to remind us what’s in store in case we don’t hand over the state to the jihadis, their accomplice and spokesman, Maulana Abdul Aziz, warns us that his masters have 500 trained female suicide bombers waiting in the wings to wreak further havoc. One would have thought a man of God would have condemned this tactic rather than boasting about it. But he has come a long way since the day he tried to escape arrest in a burqa.

In an attempt to justify the murder of over 40,000 innocent Pakistanis, defenders of the Taliban blame the American presence in Afghanistan, and Pakistan’s support for their war against terrorism. But this is rubbish: militants have been attacking targets in Pakistan since before 9/11.

And Islamist groups were created and supported by the army to operate in India-held Kashmir since the early 1990s. Emboldened and legitimised, they soon turned their guns on the state and people of Pakistan, as Zahid Hussain reminded us in a recent column.

In those days, I recall criticising this policy to a serving general. His reply was revealing: “If a few hundred jihadis can tie down several Indian divisions in Kashmir, away from our borders, it makes perfect military sense to support them.” But short-term gains do not always translate into long-term strategic advantage.

Now, those few hundred militants have multiplied into thousands of bloodthirsty criminals who know they have their foe on the ropes. There is a supreme irony here: Pakistan has long prided itself on being a militarised state with a huge army and a powerful, unaccountable military intelligence apparatus. But in the face of the Islamist groups they created in the first place, they can offer us no security or defence.

It would appear that to save Punjab from a backlash, Nawaz Sharif will go to any length to appease the jihadis. The other theory, put forward by Humayun Gauhar in a recent column in The Nation, is that the government is using the Taliban demands for Sharia to further its own covert agenda.

We all recall that in his earlier stint, Nawaz Sharif had tried to impose the 15th Amendment that would have made Sharia the law of the land, and conferred on him the title of Commander of the Faithful. Maybe he’ll get his wish this time around, but at a high cost.

Tailpiece: My old friend Mustafa Noorani was killed in a pointless accident last week. The young man who was arrested for recklessly causing the fatal crash has been released on bail; being well-connected, he will probably not be tried. Mustu was the gentlest, kindest man I have ever met. May he rest in peace.

irfan.husain@gmail.com