The Soviet Union has collapsed.  Karl Marx is read mainly in Comparative Literature Departments.  You may think class war is no more.

You’d be wrong.

The Taliban are the new Bolsheviks, the new Lenins.  Marx wanted communist revolutionaries to exploit class war.  Persuade and provoke the proletariat to overthrow capitalists living off the surplus of labor.  It is a strategy desgined for a capitalist society. Rural Pakistan has not reached that level of development and is largely a feudal society.  The Taliban have simply taken Marxist strategy and applied it to this more primitive society. They are pitting the rural population against their landlords.  The landlords are fleeing, their lives in peril.  Their land is redistributed to their workers by the Taliban.  In return, the Taliban impose Islamic Law and get a  share of any profits.  Not the outcome Marx envisaged.  Power to the Taliban not Power to the People.

What does the future hold?  The Taliban have taken control of Swat using this strategy.  They might extend it into Punjab Province.  And who kows where it goes from there.  Pakistan, a nuclear state, is frightening.  It’s hard to know what to do.  Land reform for the peasants seem to be the least aggressive option.  This would make them less amenable to joining the Taliban.  Helping the Pakitani army fight the insurgents is a more aggressive policy.  This could easily backfire amd draw more support for the insurgents.

The Navy Seals should be training to take over nuclear bunkers as well as shoot Somali pirates.