re: I realize it's not a direct quote that you can show me.
From the first link:
It also comes 10 days after the government of President Asif Ali Zardari agreed to the imposition of Islamic law, or Shariah, in Swat, as part of the deal with the Taliban.
A local politician, Jamsher Khan, said that people were initially determined to resist the Taliban in Buner, but that they were discouraged by the deal the government struck with the Taliban in Swat.
"We felt stronger as long we thought the government was with us," he said by telephone, "but when the government showed weakness, we too stopped offering resistance to the Taliban."
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she was concerned that Pakistan's government was making too many concessions to the Taliban, emboldening the militants and allowing them to spread by giving in to their demands.
"I think that the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and to the extremists," Mrs. Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill.
From the second link:
The concessions to the militants, who now control about 70 percent of the region just 100 miles from the capital, were criticized by Pakistani analysts as a capitulation by a government desperate to stop Taliban abuses and a military embarrassed at losing ground after more than a year of intermittent fighting. About 3,000 Taliban militants have kept 12,000 government troops at bay and terrorized the local population with floggings and the burning of schools.
...Pakistani legal experts and other analysts warned that the decision by the authorities would embolden militants in other parts of the country.
"This means you have surrendered to a handful of extremists," said Athar Minallah, a leader of a lawyers’ movement that has campaigned for an independent judiciary. "The state is under attack; instead of dealing with them as aggressors, the government has abdicated."
Shuja Nawaz, the author of "Crossed Swords," a book on the Pakistani military, said that with the accord, "the government is ceding a great deal of space" to the militants.
And pretty much this entire article from the post I made below.
I'm sorry, I really thought the articles made the point obvious.
