The Taliban's attack on the Intelligence Services in Lahore last week significantly escalated their fight against the Pakistani government. In upping the ante though they may have accidentally triggered public support for the military.
For months now the Taliban have been gaining ground; from their heartland in the rugged Northwest provinces, they've been pushing toward the settled interior region, terrorizing the Swat valley en route.
Now they've extended their campaign all the way to the east coast city of Lahore, killing 23 and injuring hundreds in this latest suicide bombing.
Despite the horrific brutality on their agenda, not until very recently have diverse groups of Pakistan appeared willing to unite in opposition to the Taliban.
On May 18th several political parties signed a joint declaration to support the military, but as The Economist noted, it critically omitted any specific reference to the Taliban or to the Swat in order to win consensus. Sadly, that is because large swaths of the population remain sympathetic to their cause and deny the severity of their threat.
"There are still a lot of people in the Northwest that don't believe that these are actually right wing militant Islamists," said Waleed Saigol, on the phone with me from Lahore this weekend. "Generally it's a conservative country and most people here just believe Muslims don't kill Muslims."
The relative calm and regularity of life in Lahore in the wake of last week's bombings demonstrates how pervasive the problem with the public mood is.
"People are going about their lives as if nothing has happened," said Saigol, a Pakistani entrepreneur who splits his time between Lahore and London. "On the one hand it's a good thing, as the society shows it is not going to be terrorized, but it also shows a sense of denial of how big the problem is."
The attack in Lahore was in retaliation for the military's new offensive and is part of a carefully designed strategy to demoralize state security forces.
"One would expect the population by and large would be appalled and we're not actually seeing that...When the media was curbed and the Chief Justice was sacked thousands marched everyday in the streets for almost two years to get him reinstated, but where have all these people gone when Islamic fascists are posing an existential threat to Pakistan?"
The Taliban receive widespread sympathy in Pakistan after decades of the government's failure to provide public services and cultivate their own loyalty.
"If [the state] was giving them jobs, health care or they could live in security, they would be standing up to defend it...Why risk your life for this social order?" said Saigol. Nonetheless, the military claims they are currently seeing new signs of co-operation from the masses.
"The military feels it's in a much better position to finish the job because it has public support," said General Abbas on Saturday, as quoted in The New York Times, discussing the army's success in the Swat over the weekend.
Pakistani civilians speaking to the BBC World Serviceon Sunday said they were thrilled to see the Taliban go, but contradicted some of the military's account of the fighting and appealed for humanitarian aid.
As this latest round of violence begins to change popular sentiment, it opens an opportunity for the government to step in and earn back the support of its citizens. To do so they need to not just win the gunfight, but to protect the millions of refugees pouring out of the Swat, provide food and medical care (which they've so far done poorly) and signal a long-term commitment to infrastructure and education (only about half of school age children in Pakistan attend school).
Unfortunately, many Pakistanis also still see the Taliban as offshoots of American-backed Afghanis who helped fight the Cold War for the United States.
"Ronald Regan thought that the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan were going to be the moral equivalent of America's Founding Fathers. The Taliban are just the children of those moral equivalents that have become a problem not only for Pakistan and Afghanistan, but for the whole world," explained Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States on The Daily Show last week.
"What we are dealing with is a lot of debris from the past," he told host Jon Stewart.
Historically Lahore has been the safest of Pakistan's big cities; neither the business center (Karachi), nor the political capital (Islamabad), Lahore has traditionally been more of a cultural destination-"the heartbeat of the Punjab."
For violence and denial to overwhelm this relatively well-developed town shows just how widespread Pakistan's problems have come. Three years ago when I was briefly living there people used to ask me "isn't Lahore like Los Angeles?" referring to the upscale residential neighborhoods with manicured lawns and golf courses. Today the analogy is a bad joke and nowhere seems insulated from the Taliban's reach.
I asked Saigol why denial was winning in Pakistan. "That problem is more regional than just in Pakistan. Ask an Arab about September 11th and they'll blame the Jews. There's a whole range of issues that it entails."
"These guys like Bin Laden are exploiting popular causes -Palestine, Kashmir, the Saudi family... The biggest recruitment cause is the Palestine."
In the short term an influx of aid for public services, not just arms, will go a long way to erode support for the Taliban, as millions are displaced, terrified and living without water, electricity or phone service. Fortunately the Obama administration has started directing funds to reach civil society to slow the humanitarian crisis, but much more money will be needed for a nation of 175 million people that is roughly twice the size of California.
In the long-term defeating the Taliban will depend not just on resolving the causes they use to recruit, but on uprooting popular denial.
It's leaders keeps coming to US with begging bowls for its citizen, yet its citizen and .... leader keep blaming and hating US.
Why does this country need US help and yet blame US for all its problems? It keeps creating a perpetual stream of terrorists from its terrorist kindergartens and yet deny their existence even when their leaders get bombed; their cities get blasted; visiting sportsmen ( Cricketers from Sri Lanka) get commando assaulted by gun-toting terrorists. Not a single one gets cought!!!
And we keep pumping in more money on this hopeless basket-case...