August 21, 2009

 

Baitullah Mehsud and after

Baitullah Mehsud, terror chieftain of the Tehrik-i-Taliban of Pakistan (TTP), was killed in a CIA drone attack on August 5 on a remote farmhouse in Zangara, South Waziristan, where he was sheltering and receiving at that moment a glucose drip to overcome the weakness from diarrhea and dehydration. He seldom slept in the same place two days in a row and did not allow to be photographed. The US had put a bounty of $5 million on his head, while Pakistan authorities had offered $650,000. The Time magazine had named him as one of the 100 most influential persons of the world. Newsweek had called him “the man who could well be the newest Enemy No. 1 in the war on terror”.

The stocky Baitullah, 38, was barely 5.2 feet tall with less than swashbuckling appearance. But he did radiate a certain charisma that attracted people much taller and sturdier. Born into a poor Pushtun family of village Makeen in South Waziristan, Mehsud could not go beyond the elementary school. A diabetic, he married the second time in September 2008, as he had no child from the first. His second wife, who is said to be ministering to him at the time of the attack, also died with him.

He formed the TTP in December 2007 when several tribal commanders agreed to his leadership despite his physically unimposing personality and limited education and knowledge of Islamic laws whose supremacy he sought under the inspiration of Mullah Omar and Al Qaeda leaders, Osama and Al-Zawahiri. His uncanny negotiating skills suppressed tribal rivalries in favor of a Council of United Mujahideen of which he became the chief. That established his leadership in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

While his supporters believed that Masud had brought peace to Waziristan, his detractors argued that any such peace came at a high price. Like a mafia boss, Masud and his lieutenants forced the populace to shell out protection money. His leadership qualities came into play when he managed to train and line up a new cadre of diehard commanders ready to take on Pakistan’s security forces in case of any major offensive.

He shot into prominence after Pakistan’s army commandos stormed in mid-July, 2007 the Red Mosque of Islamabad that had become a virtual fort harboring hundreds of militants, both men and women. Baitullah swore to take revenge from the security forces. A series of suicide attacks followed, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007. He denied vehemently that he had anything to do with the Bhutto murder, arguing that it was against the code of conduct of a Pushtun to kill women. That his suicide attacks on hotels and other public places killed women too was just a collateral damage.

Officials, however, linked him not only to the Bhutto murder, but to 80% of all terrorist, particularly suicide, attacks in the country since then, including the Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel and Peshawar’s Pearl Continental bombings. He had, however, claimed personal responsibility for some incidents including the Lahore Police Academy attack, an attack on an Islamabad police station, a suicide bombing on a military convoy in Banns, and a shooting at a US immigration center in New York. Most of these attacks, he argued, were carried out in response to the US drone attacks.

TTP comprised about 40 commanders with a collective strength of 25,000 and was considered the most lethal of the Taliban outfits in the tribal region of Pakistan.

The group had at one stage successfully taken 250 army personnel, including several officers, as hostages. They were released probably on payment of ransom money.

The death of Baitullah Mehsud is therefore a severe dent on the Taliban structure. He was a puny person as a Mehsud, a Pushtun and a terrorist, but leadership wise he overshadowed and outsmarted many cock-on-the wall leaders of Pakistan who have acquired deep pockets but remained shallow cerebrally and guilty of insincerity and dereliction of their commitment to national security. No wonder, he had to be killed by a US missile shot from a US drone.

What happens now? That is the crucial question. Would the Taliban formation collapse owing to the sudden elimination of their unifying leader? Would an equally charismatic leader smoothly step into his shoes? Or, would the internecine differences emerge to the surface and destroy the unity of command?

The situation is still foggy. But, one thing is quite clear. There has been no panic so far among his followers. The psychological impact on his followers might have badly shaken them up. His charisma was behind the unity of command in the ranks of Taliban. That appears to be still influencing his followers.

The Council of United Mujahideen, organized by him, might be able to hold a meeting and elect a successor. Conflicting and unreliable reports keep coming about such a meeting and the race among various contenders for the leadership position becoming increasingly stringent and contentious. By the time this column is published, one of the three main contenders might succeed in grabbing the crown.

It would be a folly for the Pakistan Army to think that the contest for succession would lead to rampant infighting that would forever fragment the TTP. Baitullah had instilled a strong culture of cooperation in the ranks of TTP. One may therefore expect a swift resolution to the rivalry.

This is the time for a clear decision for putting an end to the insurgency. The army must move in, destroy TTP’s ramparts, eliminate their training centers and the foreign fighters and establish the writ of the government on the entire belt like they did in Swat. Negotiations at this stage with any TTP leader will merely allow time for the dissidents to regroup and launch subsequently severer attacks to avenge the death of their leader.

Taliban and their antiquated values constitute an unmitigated evil for a forward-looking and progressive society. The people of Pakistan love their religion but not the concocted version fed to the ill-informed Taliban who, for instance, thought that they were doing the right thing by demolishing the Bamian Buddha statutes.

The British, instead of keep fighting an avoidable war with the fierce fighters of the Tribal Areas, elected to allow them a kind of autonomy that massaged their egos, and keep their tribal chieftains in line through doles. Pakistan inherited the system and maintained it to avoid a conflict with the vested interest with the result that the area has become fossilized in time and strikes like a museum of antiquity but without any visitors.

Fortunately, Pakistan government lifted on August 14 the ban on political activities in the tribal belt admitting the people to elect their own representatives for Pakistan’s Parliament. This is a laudable first step in bringing into the main national stream the seven agencies of the region with a population of four million.

It would reduce the influence of the ill-informed clerics who use the pulpit to promote the misguided and murky, though utopian, aims of the religious extremists. It would, instead, introduce the region to secular politics and development of a national outlook, turning the necks of the populace to the future instead of backwards to centuries past. The army has now to move with determination into South Waziristan to demolish the strongholds of Taliban and pave the way for a new order fulfilling the inherent desire of the badly neglected people for a place under the sun.

- arifhussaini@hotmail.com