For the most part, the language we have used to describe the massacre of 132 school children in Peshawar has consisted of cliches -- the perpetrators were evil, cowardly, animals.

This language of righteous rage tells us next to nothing about the perpetrators and why they acted as they did. The Taliban's justification of the carnage may be self-serving, but it also tells us that their acts had context.

It is important to understand this context, because the ideals that drove the perpetrators are inexorably shaping Pakistan's destiny, no matter what the outcome of the war between the state and the Taliban might be.

Read Praveen Swamy's piece for the Indian Express.