Presenting a documentary film entitled "Fighting the Taliban", the Pakistani High Commission here was trying to persuade the Indians that Islamabad is seriously engaged in a war against terrorism which is a threat to security to the entire South Asian region.

The documentary, produced by Indian journalist Rohit Gandhi, has brought a slice of the frontline action of the Pakistani Armed forces battling the Taliban in the treacherous terrain of South Waziristan (SWAT) which shares its border with Afghanistan. The documentary was shown at the high commission this week.

Gandhi, who has 17 years experience and won international awards, traveled with a SWAT team of the Punjab regiment of the Pakistan Army to be at the battleground in the village of Makeen in South Waziristan.

Pakistan's High Commissioner (Ambassador) to India Shahid Malik said at the presentation: "The most serious threat the world is facing today emanates from terrorism. We are committed to challenging extremism and we remain convinced that lasting solution requires elimination of root causes."

The film opened with Pakistani soldiers aiming and firing at a house suspected to be a Taliban hideout. The soldiers with their "multi-pronged attack against the Taliban" push forward to clear the house.

After a prolonged fight, the film showed, the soldiers freed the village from the Taliban, recaptured it and cache of arms left by them.

Another village in South Waziristan another scene -- a few meters away from the flattened house of Baitullah Masood who was killed in American drone attack in August 2009, a training center bore testimony of how the Taliban used to brainwash impressionable boys as old as 14 and 15.

It's where they used to be trained into suicide bombers and to be martyrs to give up their life in the name of religion, to secure a place in heaven and eventually to be blessed with never ending bliss in the company of virgin girls.

The center walls are etched with to-be-suicide-bombers' blood signatures before leaving on assignments.

Gandhi embedded with the Pakistani Army through his documentary showed the remote and inaccessible region and its people caught in the crossfire. A young smart girl Malala Yusuf Zai in the Swat Valley condemning the Taliban for forcing her to leave her education gave a sense of how extremists were damaging civil society by enforcing extreme regressive way of life.

Gandhi also traveled to other towns including Rawalpindi to show the menace of Suicide bombers. He has shown how "over- stretched' Pakistani soldiers are engaged in fighting the Taliban who quite often slip in from Afghanistan, how the war on terror has uprooted many of its people, some of whom are now living as refugees in Dera Ghazi Khan and depending on the government aid.

It's pretty much what Pakistan would like to show to the rest of the world. Shahid Malik termed the documentary as "gripping and objective and "showed where Pakistan was going in the context of global war".

From a viewer's perspective, the documentary does show some never-seen-before footage of inaccessible areas and what it's like fighting a war in such a difficult rugged terrain with fierce tribesmen who vouch for their different identity and are governed by their own culture and rules.

However, at the same time, the viewer fails to get an independent perspective of the story.

All one was left seeing with was Pakistani soldiers firing, their positioning and their forward movement and their efforts to reign in the Taliban. While it's commendable on the journalist's part to risk his life and gain access to this remote and inaccessible region, the film seemed one sided.

The documentary made in association with the U.S. TV networks, PBS,"targets American audience perhaps to show what they would like to see--Pakistan, the biggest ally of the U.S. in fighting the war on terror, is committed to the cause," said one viewer.

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