( CNN ) -- The slaughter of more than 130 children at a school by the Pakistani Taliban on Tuesday may prove as pivotal to Pakistan 's national security policy as the 9/11 attacks were for the United States . For decades since its founding in 1947 , Pakistan has conceived of its neighbor India as its main enemy . Indeed , the two countries have fought three major wars with each other as well as many smaller skirmishes . With Tuesday 's attack , it is abundantly clear to all Pakistanis that their main enemy is the internal enemy -- the Pakistani Taliban . This realization has been a long time coming , but it has finally come because the Taliban have killed thousands of Pakistani soldiers , police and civilians over the past decade . And with Tuesday 's attack the level of Pakistani outrage against the Taliban is now at unprecedented levels . There is a widespread narrative in the United States that the Pakistani government has not done enough to counter the Taliban . That narrative is out of date . In fact there has been a sea change in how , in particular , the Pakistani military regards the Taliban , whom it once supported . In August 2012 , Ashfaq Parvez Kayani , then the army chief general , gave a speech in Pakistan that did n't get much attention in the West , but it was a clear statement that the most important player in Pakistan 's national security was reformulating Pakistani strategy from its overwhelmingly India-focus to the domestic threat posed by the Pakistani Taliban . Kayani said , `` We realize that the most difficult task for any army is to fight against its own people . ... The fight against extremism and terrorism is our own war and we are right in fighting it . '' This policy of taking the fight to the Pakistani Taliban has been continued by the new army chief general , Raheel Sharif , who visited the United States last month , a trip that was notable for the warm reception he received in Washington and also at U.S. Central Command in Tampa , Florida , which manages the war in Afghanistan . This visit was all in stark contrast from three years ago when Pakistani-American relations were at their nadir following the raid in Abbottabad , Pakistan , in which Osama bin Laden was killed . The principal reason for the warming U.S.-Pakistan relationship has been the large-scale operation that the Pakistani military launched beginning in June into the remote tribal region of North Waziristan along the Afghan-Pakistan border . North Waziristan is the headquarters of the Pakistani Taliban , the notorious Taliban-affiliated Haqqani Network and remnants of al Qaeda . Launching such an operation has long been a key demand of the United States to the Pakistani military and government . According to the Pakistani military , during the past six months , it has killed more than 1,000 militants . Among them was the death this month of Adnan Shukrijumah , a key leader of al Qaeda who grew up in New York and Florida . From multiple sources in the Pakistani military and the U.S. government I have heard that it was the Pakistani military , not the civilian government , that was pushing hard to conduct the North Waziristan operation . Earlier in the year , the civilian government , led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif , clung to the hope -- in reality , a delusion -- that some kind of a peace deal could be struck with the Pakistani Taliban . As Tuesday 's despicable attack makes clear , the Pakistani Taliban are not a bunch of Henry Kissingers-in-waiting eager to make a deal , but rather are led by fanatical religious zealots willing to send half a dozen suicide attackers to kill scores of children . The history of negotiations with fanatical religious zealots is not an encouraging one . Indeed , anyone with the most passing knowledge of previous `` peace '' deals with the Pakistan Taliban would have understood the futility of trying to make a deal with them . The Pakistani government concluded peace deals with the Taliban in 2004 , 2005 and 2008 . All of the deals collapsed . Today the Pakistani military understands that the Frankenstein that it helped to create must now be killed . It will have the support of the vast majority of Pakistanis to do so .
John Bergen : Killing of more than 130 children at Pakistan school shocked a nation . He says it 's an indication of irreparable breach between Pakistani military and Taliban . Pakistan : Military sees its main enemy as internal terrorists rather than historic enemy India . He says Pakistani military says it has killed more than 1,000 civilians in North Waziristan .