Email: asdar@mail.utexas.edu

Tel. +1-512-471-7531 (office)

Ali commented: “Why the Pakistani army has decided to repulse the Taliban in Pakistan’s advance so aggressively now, when it has only tentatively engaged them in the two previous years of insurgency in the area, is something of a mystery. Perhaps, after losing formal power in Pakistan with the 2008 ouster of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the army wanted security in the country to deteriorate to the extent that the populace would clamor for it to fend off the Islamists.”

Kamran Ali is associate professor of anthropology and acting director of the South Asia Institute at the University of Texas-Austin and a former editor of Middle East Report.