100 miles from Islamabad
The day after the announcement of a peace deal between the Islamabad government and a section of the Taliban in northwestern Pakistan, unknown men kidnapped and shot dead a local television reporter covering events linked to the deal. Geo Television's Musa Khankhel, 28, was accompanying the peace caravan headed by Maulana Sufi Mohammed, the octogenarian head of the banned Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), the Movement for the Enforcement of Sharia Law.
Sufi's caravan of some 300 vehicles had driven from Mingora to Matta in Swat, where he was expected to meet with his (reportedly estranged) son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, and prevail upon him to lay down arms. Fazlullah, known as 'Maulana Radio' because of his effective use of FM radio for the sake of both publicity and terrorising his opponents, has been fighting ostensibly for the imposition of Sharia law in Malakand division, which includes the Swat Valley. The deal, in which the government promised the TNSM that it would impose Sharia – essentially restoring a system of quick justice in return for the militants laying down arms – took the wind out of Fazlullah's sails and heralded a truce, at least for now. It also nearly coincided with the first visit to the region by the new US envoy Richard Holbrooke, who in the past has emphasised the importance of negotiating with Taliban militants.
Many remain unhappy about the deal, however. The murder of Khankhel, who had been an active reporter, appears to be aimed at upsetting the fragile peace. His killing sent shock waves through the rest of Pakistan, re-emphasising how dangerous it is for journalists and other non-combatants in the conflict-ravaged northwestern areas of the country. The peace deal also triggered a strong negative reaction from Pakistani civil society, as well as from New Delhi, the Western governments and human-rights organisations alike. The critics argue that the agreement amounts to Islamabad's capitulation to the militants – 'rewarding' them for their violence and justifying their human-rights abuses in the affected districts, the divisions of Kohistan and Malakand, which includes the Swat Valley.
Supporters of the deal, meanwhile, point out that the Nizam-e-Adl (System of Islamic Justice) Regulation that the government has promised is not particularly different from the previous judicial systems in these areas. Sufi Mohammed, who formed the TNSM in 1988, unilaterally announced the imposition of a Nizam-e-Adl system in November 1994, just as the Taliban captured Kandahar. In 1999, Nawaz Sharif enacted some amendments to this system, but nonetheless allowed it to continue.
Dual system
Swat is a settled (as opposed to 'tribal') area less than a hundred miles from Islamabad. Sandwiched between Pakistan's tribal areas and 'mainland', it does not share a border with Afghanistan. With its Buddhist heritage and fertile lands, Swat has traditionally been populated by fruit farmers and shepherds of the peaceful rather than militant variety. The British rulers accepted Swat as an independent state in 1926, conferring on its ruler the title of Wali-e-Swat. In turn, the Wali formed a central administrative system with two types of courts. The qazi courts were headed by religious scholars, and dealt with family-law cases such as divorce and inheritance; tehsildars, revenue-administration officers, on the other hand, took up other types of cases in regular judicial courts.
Swat merged with Pakistan in 1969. Four years later, the Bhutto government created a new entity, the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA), which included Swat and a regular judicial system. In 1975, the government instituted the PATA Regulations, under which tribal jirgas were imported into the Swat judicial system, giving it a dual system of justice. It now fell to the district deputy commissioner to decide whether a particular case would go before a jirga or a regular court. The majority of litigants preferred the regular courts, even they took longer.
The Supreme Court abolished the PATA Regulations in 1992 as being discriminatory, but the failure of subsequent governments to implement this judgement in both letter and spirit paved the way for the TNSM uprising of November 1994. Over the next few years, the Taliban government in Afghanistan immeasurably strengthened such militant forces, even as Pakistan underwent a decade of political musical chairs, during which no government was allowed to complete its tenure. In 1999, the country was back under military rule, resulting in a further political vacuum and allowing militant forces to continue gaining strength.
The situation has now developed into what President Asif Ali Zardari acknowledges as a make-or-break one, in which the Taliban's attempts to establish its writ in Swat, Malakand and other frontier areas basically constitute attempts to take over part of the country. The way forward is ultimately something of a referendum on how Pakistanis want to define their state and how they want to live. In this situation, those who support the Swat deal hope that it will create a division between the Pakistani Taliban and the al-Qaeda-linked Taliban led by Baitullah Mehsud, who rules much of North and South Waziristan and other tribal areas along the Afghanistan border.
In the end, despite the criticism of civil society and the internationals, from afar it is impossible to make definitive condemnation of an agreement that indicates social regression but which simultaneously holds out the hope for silencing the guns. The test of whether President Zardari acted properly will ultimately have to be judged by whether peace truly returns to the lives of the people of Swat.