In the Shadow of Shariah - 2
Swat : the Past, Present and Future
By Dr. Mohammad Taqi
University of Florida, US
Asfandyar Wali Khan has vowed that his party would not violate the agreement reached with the fundamentalists. Common sense tells us that agreements are usually violated by those who are in a position of relative strength. As someone who could not participate in the funeral of his MP assassinated by the Taliban, or set foot in Swat after his father’s house was torched by the Taliban, Mr. Khan does not have the luxury of negotiating or violating agreements.
One is tempted to draw a comparison between the policies implemented by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and those of the ANP vis a vis the Islamic fundamentalists. Starting with the Pacification and National Reconciliation to creating and arming local militias, every step taken by the ANP is a déjà vu of the PDPA actions. However, the PDPA, even at its weakest, had a leadership which did not lose its wit. Indeed, when the jihadists – with the ISI support - unleashed their Jalalabad offensive in 1989, Dr. Najibullah himself had moved into the forward positions to lead. Khan Abdul Wali Khan had accurately observed that the defeat inflicted by Dr. Najibullah on the jihadists played a huge role in strengthening PDPA’s position to negotiate a series of agreements with insurgents on the government’s terms.
Ultimately the PDPA and Dr. Najibullah, personally, did become victims of the policy to co-opt militias. However, even in his worst hour Dr. Najibullah declined the offer by Ahmed Shah Masood, to help him escape from the Taliban onslaught.
The ANP took no time to squander the political capital it was entrusted with when it was voted to power a year ago for its secular-liberal outlook – the very qualities its leader is now denouncing. It did inherit the turmoil in Swat but also got a very clear mandate to tackle the menace of Talibanization, which was on the rise after five years of Mullahs ruling the NWFP. Unlike the PDPA getting abandoned by the Russians, the international powers like the United States have privately and openly supported the ANP.
The ANP signed-on to the military effort by the Pakistani army, already underway in Swat since July 2007, to supposedly flush out the Taliban from Swat. ANP inked a well-publicized peace deal with the Swat Taliban on May 21, 2008 and agreed to impose the Shariah in Swat. Prior to this deal, it also released the well-known ISI asset and an anti-American firebrand from Swat, Maulana Sufi Muhammad. Sufi Muhammad had led an armed campaign against the United States in Afghanistan in 2001-2002 and is the head of the outlawed Tehrik e Nifaz e Shariat e Muhammadi (TNSM- the Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad's Shariah Law), which had been trying to enforce Shariah in Swat since 1994. Sufi Muhammad was supposed to help the ANP in dealing with the leader of the Swat Taliban Mullah Fazlullah, who happened to be his son-in-law.
Barring an occasional muffled protest, the NWFP government, led by the ANP, did own-up the army action in Swat – a campaign over which it had little or no operational control. Its parliamentarians from Swat fled their constituencies and its Chief from the NWFP while the emboldened Taliban revoked the peace deal. ANP, the senior partner in the NWFP government, opted not to take the people of the province and Pakistan or its own leaders like Afzal Khan, into confidence about the shenanigans of the army and the Taliban in Swat. No effort was made to mobilize the street or media to explain as to why – if at all - in less than a year, people who voted overwhelmingly against the Mullahs were suddenly craving Shariah. Another option available in a democracy that was shunned is quitting the government and sitting on the opposition benches and allowing a minority government to function, while supporting it on an issue by issue basis.
What we have witnessed in Swat is not random by any means. The military’s game plan from the get-go has been to create circumstances in Swat, which would allow the Taliban to eventually hold sway over that region – not unlike the way Kabul was allowed to descend into chaos in the mid-1990s and then the Taliban installed as the saviors. Just like after years of shelling by the rival jihadists, the residents of Kabul yearning for peace welcomed the marauding Taliban, the Swatis would have welcomed even Attila the Hun, if peace was a prospect.
Pakistan never really wanted to take on the Taliban, either in Afghanistan or on its own soil and as is well-known, became an ally in the war on terror after not so diplomatic persuasion by Colin Powell and Richard Armitage. However, it played its cards close to its chest and decided to move its Taliban assets to safe havens in FATA and Swat, when the going got tough in Afghanistan. It is not surprising that not a single major Taliban leader has ever been captured or killed by the Pakistan army, in FATA or Swat. The local Swatis labeled the army operations Rah e Haq 1, 2 and 3 as a friendly match with the Taliban that resulted in upwards of 1500 civilian deaths in Swat but less than 200 Taliban and about 80 army casualties. The army and its apologists, some of whom sit in the federal cabinet, have been blaming the US for not providing them with technology to jam the infamous FM radio broadcasts by the Taliban and to track their leaders. It is the same military which had taunted the secular Baluch nationalists for their lack of technology and then swiftly killed their leader Akbar Bugti in 2006 after reportedly tapping his satellite phone.
Many retired and certain serving army generals are on record to have stated that the Taliban are part of the Pakistan’s strategic defense and are its allies, who can be activated when needed. This line of reasoning is also being pushed through the media by a few defense analysts known for their close association with the army establishment. In the context of how the Taliban have been rewarded, with money, land and power, for burning girls’ schools and mutilating dead bodies, this approach is all the more ominous. At loss for strategic depth in Afghanistan, the army is using the NWFP to protect the monstrosity it has nursed for more than a generation.
The drama played out ala PCO Supreme Court is serving as the perfect diversion to allow the army a respite from intense media attention, while it eases its Taliban assets into being the de facto rulers of Swat and FATA. What we have seen in Swat is a peace to end all peace; the shadow of Shariah looms large over the rest of Pakistan. (Concluded)
(The author practices and teaches medicine at the University of Florida and can be reached at taqimd@gmail.com )
