"It is these mullahs, whose religious education is often minimal, who are forming the private militias labelled 'the Pakistan Taliban'. In fact, they are little more than a fractious confederation of mini-states run by warlords. Together they have succeeded in expelling almost all representatives of any government authority from their territory and in doing so, some analysts fear, have laid the foundations for a state without borders or flags, but which has a justice system and a common ethnicity, ideology, culture and religion."