Is an Army Operation Necessary in FATA?
By Syed Kamran Hashmi
Westfield, IN
Some people call him the ‘Master of U-turns’. However, if the question is about an army operation in the tribal areas, even the critics would agree, Imran Khan has always been a man of his word. From day one, he has reckoned army boots on the ground in the western Pashtun belt would never solve the problem. He claims to be personally familiar with their culture, understand their moral values and know their psychology from inside out. For that reason, he has always opposed a military solution in the tribal agencies, and has been at odds with the liberals of Pakistan who generally support such an action.
For years, the Chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf has been urging the people in power to initiate a dialogue with the Pakistani Taliban and start the peace process. It is also true that negotiations are only one part of his comprehensive program, and cannot, by any means, be confused with appeasement. In the first stage, long before any kind of peace parleys, he intends to dissociate Pakistan from the US-led war on terror as a matter of state policy. In his opinion, which is shared by many Pakistanis, this initiative alone would calm down a significant number of militants and disenchant a large number of recruits planning jihad against the US and the infidels (Pakistan) supporting them. Not only that, it would also help the government to win over the hearts and minds of the local population and provide them a rare window of opportunity to start the conciliation process. Galvanized with hope and responsibility, in these circumstances, the tribesmen would then fight against the radicals on their own, and ultimately root them out of their areas to acquire re-possession of their lands. The extremists, on the other hand, once facing the loss of tribal support, may either decide to flee as they will not have a chance to win, or may choose to fight and get killed by the local population. Some of them would still be left who can easily be handled by the police and intelligence agencies. This is the crux of the matter, put simply in three words: dissociate, negotiate and liberate.
To back up his claim, Khan blames the ongoing military operations in the tribal areas for the escalating violence in the country. He also holds the indiscriminate killing of innocent Pashtuns through drone strikes as a part of the problem. In his view, if army action was really the solution, then we should have attained peace after so many of them being conducted in various agencies; but the reality is just the opposite. The situation is getting worse in almost every region of the tribal belt. Our soldiers are being killed by their Muslim brothers in a war whose objectives are determined by ‘foreign powers’.
As Khan’s point of view is gaining support, the Taliban have also put forward their offer for dialogue. With a knee jerk reaction, every conservative party and most liberal groups — voluntarily or involuntarily — have jumped from their ships after their proposal to grab the rope of a peaceful solution. In these circumstances, we can come to the following conclusion: the argument to negotiate with the extremists has prevailed and is supported by the majority of people, bringing a moral victory for Khan and validating his assertion to be correct, right? Maybe not.
Universally, liberals are known to be the most peaceful people, possessing and professing an egalitarian ideology; but, surprisingly, in Pakistan, most of them favor an army-led major surgical strike in all the territories including the tribal areas where the writ of the state has been compromised. They do not agree with Khan’s assessment at all, and believe his views are overly simplistic and immensely naive.
First, let us talk about the role of negotiations in the peace process. It may sound surprising; but in fact, liberals do not brush aside its role completely. Notwithstanding that, they believe the dialogue can only be productive from a position of strength. If done in haste and from a position of weakness, it can be counterproductive or even catastrophic. They anticipate any compromise on the state’s behalf before a powerful position has been ascertained, can be perceived as a sign of weakness and lead to more insurgency and more radicalism. That is why while conservatives overestimate dialogue’s role, they tend to downplay it.
Then the question becomes how we do get to a position of strength. Liberals believe it can only be achieved through military action. Our department of police, even if is authorized to work in the tribal areas, does not have the resources, training, equipment or funding to combat terrorism as is evident from its ineffectiveness in the rest of the country. The civilian intelligence agencies face the same problems of finances, human resources and professional training and would therefore equally be non-productive. The only organization that is equipped in Pakistan and is somewhat capable of tackling guerrilla warfare is the Pakistan army. At the same time, it is also the only organization that has a proper intelligence network in that area, or at least we hope they do. So, by default and for all practical purposes, the army becomes our only choice and liberals do not deny that.
People who know the current situation of the tribal areas apprise us that the dynamics of various tribes have changed altogether after the infiltration of foreign fighters. They understand that the association of the infiltrators with the members of the tribes is not purely ideological, it is also financial, political and to top it all, criminal. Without external help from army, most neutral analysts believe it is impossible for the local people — who are out of that network — to break their nexus; and not providing them that extra strength is a disfavour to both the tribes who are being used as human shields, and the citizens living in the settled areas being targeted by the radicals.
The reasons for the failure of the previous army actions are also obvious to them: lack of public support, political divisions and further subdivisions among the parties, disinformation about the nature of ‘jihad,’ and a strong anti-American sentiment. Once we make up our mind as a nation, provide unanimous political support to the armed forces and then ask them to go after the militants, I am sure the results would not be any different from the operation in the Swat Valley, which is not ideal but acceptable. But we have to make up our minds first.
(The writer is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com )
