For all of the tough talk from Paksitan on defeating al Qaeda and the Taliban in their strongholds int he northwest, the latest strategy shows just how unserious the government is when it comes to taking on the Taliban. Syed Saleem Shahzad is a Pakistan-based reporter and has been ahead of the story there for year. According to him, the government is backing one Taliban warlord to defeat the main Taliban warlord:

As part of this strategy, the government is backing Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud’s rival Haji Turkestan Bhittani’s tribe, which has in recent days been battling Mehsud’s tribe in its South Waziristan stronghold, while the army has pounded the Mehsud tribe’s mountain sanctuaries…