A crack team of elite Indian liberals, comprising Ram Chandra Guha, Manish Tewari, Sagarika Ghose, and the one and only Mani Shankar Aiyar, have been enlisted to work with NATO forces to battle the forces of extremism in Afghanistan. These champions of secularism and pluralism, who had cut their teeth taking on right wing forces in television studios and ivory towers of academia back in India, will now train their guns against the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other forces of extremism that come in the way of Afghanistan’s march towards secularism and progressive thinking.

The Indian Seals – as they are referred to by their American counterparts in awe – commenced their dangerous mission after parachuting into the Hindu Kush mountains in the wee hours of dawn from a Lockheed C-130 Hercules after taking off from the NATO base in Jalalabad near the Af-Pak border.

The liberals have fanned out in different directions with Mani heading towards Quetta to corner renegade Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, in his cave and overpower him with a tongue lashing. Manish Tewari will proceed in south-eastern direction towards N. Waziristan on the other side of the Durand line to engage in hand to hand verbal combat with Pasthun warlord and Islamic fundamentalist, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Sagarika will handle psy ops, broadcasting propaganda from Kabul through her program, Face the Afghan Nation, and posting real time tweets in a bid to completely demoralize the Taliban ranks. She already fired her first salvo by coining the term ‘Internet Taliban’, which has led to much disgruntlement within the Islamist militia.

The Indian seals have already notched up remarkable victories – Mullah Omar, after being confronted by Mani, who proceeded to lecture him on secularism, came running out of his cave and surrendered to NATO forces. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar met with a gorier fate: Manish Tewari reportedly banged him against the wall and subjected him to a diatribe on the perils of socially conservative thinking, inducing the fearsome Pashtun leader to faint in shock. Hekmatyar is now recuperating in a medical center at a NATO base near Jalalabad.

The Americans are so pleased with the results that they now want to outsource the entire war against obscurantism in the Af-Pak region to their Indian liberal allies but experts have been quick to point out the follies of such a move. “We funded and trained the Mujahideen in the 80s to resist the Soviet occupation. Now they have come back to bite our ass. There is no gainsaying that the Indian liberals may well turn around and attack us for our relative conservatism after they have pacified Afghanistan. I hear that Mani chap is some sort of a fundo himself, albeit of the secular variety,” cautioned a NATO analyst.