Borderland bullets and the ballot

Pakistan’s elections don’t look set to change the situation on the ground in either the NWFP or Balochistan, where the security situation continues to deteriorate precipitously.

By :Aurangzaib Khan

bilash rai

The website of the NWFP government includes a section devoted to politics, though the page offers little insight for the curious observer. Nonetheless, the tagline on the green masthead – “The Colours of Frontier: the Devout Nation, the Rising Nation” – does accurately capture the current flavour of local politics in the province, a heady brew of religious and nationalist sentiment. For the past five years, the NWFP has been ruled by a puritanical alliance of religious parties, which has accomplished little more than blackening billboards deemed obscene. With the looming elections of 2008, however, the province is yearning to rise above the label that has been slapped onto the locally dominant Pashtuns, as a militaristic and fanatic community. Enter the nationalist forces, champions of the secular cause and leading the struggle for change. But can the January parliamentary race usher in such a transformation?

Politics, after all, is the game of the possible. Real change, however, will depend on the political space that is made available to progressive parties, and whether the 2008 polls are actually free and fair. But are the local political parties up to the challenge of rescuing a province in which a crisis of governance and growing militancy has assumed calamitous dimensions? In order to ensure an environment of participatory politics, “The state should play the role of facilitator,” says Iqbal Khattak, a Peshawar-based journalist. “But it has not allowed political space to parties that are strongly opposed to militancy. The process of creating a fair playing ground should have started a long time ago, and by now they would have been strong enough to deal with the situation.”

As it is, few local parties can be considered strong. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA, the United Council for Action) – an opposition alliance of six religious parties brought to power through rigged elections in 2002 in the NWFP and Balochistan – has come undone. The two dominant parties, the anti-establishment Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and the pro-establishment Jamait-Ulema-Islam (JUI), have fallen out over the question of an election boycott. Even though the party leaders are at pains to maintain that the alliance is still intact, the reality of the situation has become clear for all to see.

The establishment’s divide-and-rule policy, a legacy of the long-ended colonial rule, has worked well. But now that it has allowed General Pervez Musharraf to stay in power, the alliance has outlived its use for a regime under pressure to make room for mainstream democratic parties. The JI, with its considerable street power, has become a nuisance, particularly due to its anti-Musharraf and anti-American stance and its repeated calls for election boycotts. Meanwhile, the Deobandi-leaning JUI, with its clout among the Taliban, holds the aces, as it remains Islamabad’s pawn in the patchy ‘war on terror’.

With Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) both eager to work with President Musharraf – as long as they get their share of the power pie, and maintain a presence at home – the MMA has now been reduced to the unnatural political force that it always was. A recent poll by the US-based International Republican Institute showed the MMA winning only three percent of the vote in the upcoming polls.

Our man in civvies
With the people’s patience for militancy and military operations – the hallmark of MMA rule – running dry, the mainstream progressive political forces could quickly rise, if given a chance through free and fair elections. Both Wali Khan’s Awami National Party (ANP), with its credo of non-violence and struggle for Pashtun identity, and the PPP, with its progressive outlook, have always found favour among the secular Pashtun population. Contrary to the popularly held view in both domestic and Western circles, says Afrasiab Khattak of the ANP, militancy and Talibanisation are not actually characteristic of the NWFP, where secular political parties such as the ANP and PPP enjoy significant strongholds.

Likewise, Balochistan has always been secular, with nationalist Baloch and Pashtun parties having popular followings. But with election observers considering the 8 January polls as already rigged, and with President Musharraf canvassing for his chief political ally – the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid), whose members he has inducted into the interim government – it seems unlikely that the anti-establishment Pashtun or Baloch parties will have a fair shot at power in the borderlands. “Musharraf, as the US’s key ally, intent on fighting the ‘war on terror’ in the tribal areas, needs a pliant partner. He does not need a powerful political opposition in the NWFP that could scuttle his plans by demanding a political solution to the current problem, as nationalist parties would most certainly do should they come to power,” says an observer in Peshawar. The same goes for Balochistan, where a simmering insurgency against Islamabad’s strong-arm tactics has kept the province on the boil.

President Musharraf draws his strength from the military, and thus has placed individuals loyal to him and supportive of his agenda in top army positions. By all indications, the US wants to resolve the issue of fighting ‘terror’ through military presence, as has become evident from the staggering amount of money Washington, DC has been pumping into the training and expansion of Pakistani troops. In the tribal areas, the US is training and arming the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force made up of tribesmen, to fight local tribesmen who are either originally part of the Taliban or who joined the group after their villages became military targets.

The Islamabad regime will therefore want to keep such sympathetic religious forces as Maulana Fazl-e-Rehman’s JUI in power in the border areas. But such an arrangement would mean continued military rule through ‘our man in civvies’, and a strengthening of rightist elements in the government whom the liberal, democratic forces would like to remove. It would also further alienate the secular Pashtun and Baloch leadership, who should be natural partners in countering militancy and Talibanisation in the
tribal hinterland.

Meanwhile, President Musharraf has hardly taken anyone into his confidence over Pakistan’s role in the US ‘terror war’, including the killing of Baloch leaders. But whether or not the January polls are fair, US support for President Musharraf will remain as long as he continues fighting its war. Analysts are of the view that maintaining the status quo in the tribal areas may be in the US’s best interest, while this would only further destabilise Pakistan in the long run.

As trouble increases in the NWFP, particularly in Swat where there has been a sudden flare up and scores have been killed over the last two months, the reaction from mainstream political parties has been varied. The ANP’s Asfandyar Wali recently told journalists that a military solution was not the answer, and that only “strong political will and political courage can make a difference.” Both the PPP the PML (N) have strongly favoured the military option over political dialogue to fight militancy, largely because they do not have a strategy of their own to deal with it. On the other hand, the All Party Democratic Movement (APDM), an opposition alliance of small regional, nationalist and religious parties, has been vocal in opposing military operations in the NWFP and Balochistan, and has threatened countrywide demonstrations of the pro-Western policies of President Musharraf’s government. Having boycotted the elections, the APDM feels that while the polls may further strengthen the president’s hold on power, the alliance of parties who have the people’s support will gain more currency in the street.

Taliban politicisation
Besides the lack of faith in the upcoming elections, the security situation in the tribal and settled belts of the NWFP is likely to keep voter turnout low. The Election Commission has already asked the authorities to postpone elections in areas where militants have found sanctuary and are fighting a war of attrition against the military. Not that elections would be able to deliver representative leadership in the tribal areas, given the ban on political parties in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the areas outside the four provinces. Under the circumstances, militant leaders with political or secessionist designs have subsequently moved in to fill the space.

Taliban leaders in the tribal agencies of Bajaur and Waziristan, which are part of the FATA, have shown interest in either contesting election themselves or in fielding relatives as candidates. Dozens of candidates have filed nominations in places where the Taliban has not threatened to disrupt elections. Other radical elements have taken independent courses that indicate a desire to consolidate militant control over the area, rather than becoming a political force. Recently, a group of 40 Taliban leaders from all over the FATA and the NWFP met in Waziristan to form a united front, with the objectives of enforcing Sharia law, fighting NATO forces in Afghanistan, and waging a “defensive Jihad against the Pakistan Army”. Taliban leaders have likewise formed a central organisation called Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan, under the warlord Baitullah Mehsud of South Waziristan. “What we are getting here is the beginning of a separate mini-state, which will be run by a FATA warlord but which will take orders from al-Qaeda,” commented a recent Daily Times editorial.

As far as the region across the frontier in Afghanistan is concerned, a resurgent Taliban has exacted heavy losses on frustrated NATO forces, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently urged Taliban fighters “to lay down their arms and join Afghanistan’s political process”, saying they had a legitimate role to play. He added that “negotiation with the Taliban is not an option, but realism is needed when tackling the insurgency that has rumbled on for nearly six years.” This approach is akin to the strategy adopted by the Pakistan military forces, whereby they tried to pacify local Taliban forces with peace deals when they were suffering heavy losses at the hands of the militants.

In the NWFP, the Taliban has been trying to style itself as a force representative of the alienated and angry Pashtuns, who have borne the brunt of the ‘war on terror’ on both sides of the border. While the merit of such a stance is moot, and while the Taliban still has to emerge as a political force, analysts fear that indiscriminate US and Pakistani military strikes in Pashtun areas are opening up the possibility that a breakaway ‘Pashtunistan’ could soon come into being under Islamist leadership. In the absence of a political culture in the FATA and lack of popular political representation in the area, this possibility may well be on the road to becoming a reality. The interest of the Taliban in the electoral process also reinforces the idea that its leaders may well be inclined towards political influence. “Like the LTTE in Sri Lanka, which has both a militant and political wing, why can’t the Taliban push for political legitimacy through fielding their candidates?” asks one observer in Peshawar.

Baloch stagnation
The January polls do not portend an end to the woes of restive Balochistan, either. With popular Baloch leaders in exile, in detention or in hiding, and others choosing to boycott the elections altogether, it looks like the province will remain mired in trouble for some time to come. With practically all major opposition parties opting out of the race, the January field has been left open to those parties loyal to President Musharraf, or those which have no popular support in the region. These particularly include the PML (Q), the PPP, the PML (N) and the JUI.

“With the nationalist parties under siege, many young activists are losing faith in the political process and now see armed resistance as the only viable way to secure their rights,” says a recent report of the International Crisis Group, respected for its analytical analysis. The report forecasts that the Balochistan insurgency will abate only when free, fair and transparent national elections are able to establish a legitimate government that can replace the “current military dictatorship”. But with a disillusioned Baloch leadership preferring bullets to the ballot, the message is clear to the Baloch nation: they cannot settle their issues in the Parliament, but only by waging a war for political and economic autonomy.

“Regardless of what the government would like us to believe, there are attacks on military establishments from Dera Bugti to Makran every day,” says a local journalist, who did not want to be named. “By boycotting the elections or not participating, the Baloch leaders are out to convince people that this country and its Parliament have no solution to their problems.”

Given the situation, pre-election activity in Quetta and the Balochistan interior has looked far from animated in recent weeks. Analysts believe the elections may change the faces, but will not change Islamabad’s policy towards the province. Furthermore, with the representative Baloch and Pashtun parties remaining out of the fray, the new government, faced with a legitimacy crisis, will have very little room to manoeuvre. Certainly it will have little scope to begin to restore trust with these groups, a process that can ultimately only come about by accepting the popular demands of provincial autonomy, and ensuring political and economic rights of the people of both Balochistan and the NWFP. Rather than making cosmetic conciliatory moves, it is this trust deficit that the new government will need to focus upon, if it wants to make peace with these troubled provinces.