The establishment of a Taliban emirate
Under the terms of the latest 'peace deal' in the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA), the militants have gained everything and the government nothing.
The Swat Valley has been in the news since early 2007, when a group of militants that we now call the 'Swat Taliban' began to succeed in taking over parts of the district by force. When their activities could no longer be ignored a military operation was launched, though it soon became painfully apparent that the militants were more than a match for the Pakistani troops. The sheer brutality of their tactics – including public executions, beheadings and open displays of butchered corpses – convinced most people that the Swat Taliban were not merely a few 'misguided' residents of Swat, waging a war for the imposition of Sharia. Rather, these were battle-hardened fighters with links to extremist organisations in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Afghanistan and perhaps even beyond.
Suddenly, the Taliban uprising in Swat was international news. This was despite the fact that other areas of the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) had already fallen under Taliban control, including parts of the districts of D I Khan and Bannu, and perhaps all of Tank. Not being tourist destinations or easily accessible, however, these areas were largely ignored, even by the local media.
The picturesque, lush green Swat was a different story. Its beautiful valleys and mountains, dense pine forests, rich culture and ancient crafts tradition, coupled with the peaceful and friendly disposition of its residents, made Swat a popular vacation choice with both local and foreign tourists. It was amongst the most educated districts in the province, thanks partly to its former princely ruler's obsession with education. Swat was also a comparatively prosperous district with a legitimate economy, based as much on the rich harvest of rice and fruit as on year-round tourism and remittances from skilled migrant workers. Swat therefore sat uneasily with the other districts in the surrounding area, which were backward in terms of education, prosperity and political awareness. As such, it is extremely ironic that the forces of obscurantism would find Swat such an easy target. For that we need to dig a bit deeper into the history of the problem.
Swat, a former princely state, was merged with Pakistan in 1969, and together with the former states of Dir and Chitral was given the special status of a Provincially Administered Tribal Area (PATA) under the Constitution. This special status was to enable the government to gradually extend laws and an administrative system as applicable in other parts of the NWFP. But internal politics quickly intervened. In 1975, the local elite, fearing loss of privilege, forced the government to bring PATA under a dual judicial system, wherein the regular judicial system would coexist with PATA-specific jirgas, councils of elders that decided on both civil and criminal cases. This arrangement was eventually declared unconstitutional by the Peshawar High Court in 1990, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in 1995. Again fearing a loss of privilege, the local elite, aided by the provincial bureaucracy, moved to encourage a little-known organisation, Maulana Sufi Mohammad's Tehrek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (the Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law, or TNSM), to block the sole extension of the state judicial system, and to demand that the areas be brought under Sharia.
Things turned violent in 1994, when the TNSM launched a bloody attempt to gain control of the capital of Swat, Saidu Sharif. The Pakistan Army was able to push back the TNSM militants, but not before the death of several people and the destruction of considerable property. The 1994 attack on Saidu Sharif bore all the characteristics of an insurgency; but Islamabad chose the path of expediency, and decided not to deal with it as such. Instead, the Benazir Bhutto government held negotiations with Sufi Mohammad, and a new regulation – the Shari Nizam-e-Adl Regulation, 1999 – was promulgated to appease his group. Even though the new regulation brought only superficial changes to the legal system in the name of Sharia, the message to the people of Swat was clear: the TNSM was a force to be reckoned with and, more importantly, any group can get away with challenging the state and even committing serious crimes when it is invoking the cause of Sharia. Thus began Swat's gradual slide into the present abyss.
While the new arrangement did bring relative peace to Swat over the course of the late 1990s and early 2000s, it also allowed the militants to gain strength. Sufi Mohammad's tirades against the state and democracy were tolerated. The government also took no action against the illegal FM radio stations that sprang up in Swat and throughout the rest of the province, which disseminated Taliban ideology and ridiculed the state and its policies. It was through these radio broadcasts that women in these areas were, for the first time, able to come under the sway of mullahs, who till then had to be content with speaking to all-male audiences at mosques.
Things changed quickly. As Taliban groups sprang up in most villages, women and even girls were forced to wear burqas; video-shop owners were attacked and barbers threatened, for shaving of beards is considered un-Islamic. In some villages, people were 'encouraged' to bring their television sets, tape recorders and other electronics – though not radios! – to be destroyed publicly. The illegal FM stations also launched a smear campaign against local organisations, particularly those working on women's and human rights. The government, meanwhile, simply looked the other way, just as a parent might at the antics of favourite 'spoilt' child.
Taliban tentacles
The evolving local politics of Swat cannot be delinked from the larger issues, which have impacted the Pashtun society of NWFP – including influence from across the border, and still larger geopolitical issues. The situation in Afghanistan, where the Taliban had set up a fanatical regime, was both a source of inspiration and great practical help to the Swat militants. Indeed, since it began in the 1980s, the Afghan conflict has had a huge impact on life across the border, in ways that people often do not want to talk about. During the past two decades, an estimated seven million automatic rifles have found their way from Afghanistan into the NWFP and the Tribal Areas. This flood of armament, combined with the increase in the Wahhabi madrassas and the militant tone of the times, irrevocably changed the religious landscape of the province.
The funding for the running and the establishment of madrassas propagating the Wahhabi doctrine started during the late 1960s, with the arrival of 'petro-dollar' prosperity in West Asia. In the first instance, this led to friction with then-dominant Barelvis, which follow Sufi practices and are ostracised by the Wahhabists as 'grave worshippers'. On the other hand, Wahhabists, also known as Salafis or Deobandis, believe in a puritan interpretation of Islam that advocates return to the earlier generations of Islamic history; hence, they are more militant in the expression of their faith then the Barelvis. Later, this translated into clashes with Shia communities, which continue today. The Shia community also received a boost from the Iranian Revolution and, for a time, experts believed that Pakistan had become a battlefield for proxy wars between these oil-rich states, bent upon exporting their own religious doctrines.
The dominance of the Wahhabi group meant that the tradition of religious tolerance that had become the hallmark of the Barelvis was considerably diluted. While this rather suited the government at the time of the Afghan war, it was not without its consequences later. Following the Afghan war, when the Taliban phenomenon surfaced in Afghanistan, it was believed that it would travel to Pakistan sooner or later, owing to the fact that the Taliban were almost entirely Pashtun. While this process came to be known as 'Talibanisation', for many Pashtun it was more a process of 'Arabisation', as the Taliban held that since the language of the afterlife will be Arabic, so only Arabic would be taught to children.
Traditionally, the mullah was not a particularly prominent figure in Pashtun society. Though not necessarily liberal in its outlook, it was distinctly different, with pretensions to a sort of chivalry (and a code of honour) that forbade the kind of cruelty meted out to prisoners by the Taliban, as well as suicide bombings and violence against 'unrelated' women. In the 1980s, a period of harsh military dictatorship in Pakistan, the political parties were forced on the run. Perhaps inevitably, it was the mullahs who ended up filling the resulting political vacuum. They gained in stature, and even began to take up leadership roles. The Afghan conflict, and later the disintegration of the Soviet Union, considerably weakened the leftist movement, which had been at the forefront of the democratic and rights-based movements in Pakistan.
The various Afghan and Pakistani militant groups based in the NWFP engaged in fighting the Russian and Afghan armies came under the protection of the Islamabad government. As this was a covert war, however, the government regularly denied many activities that were taking place in plain sight. Eventually, this did much to dissolve the credibility of the government in the eyes of the common man. Even today, many conspiracy theories abound, and people are all too ready to believe the government's complicity in militant actions, oftentimes without due cause.
The rise to power of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan during the mid-1990s gave fresh impetus to the militant groups in Pakistan. Islamabad's support for the Taliban was justified on the basis of bringing 'peace' to Afghanistan, though how exactly peace has been defined has been an extremely contentious issue. What happened, in the end, was to increase the strength of militant Islam, which seeped back to Pakistan from Afghanistan. The most important lesson of the Afghan experience for militant groups in Pakistan was that the imposition of Sharia could be a vehicle of legitimacy for setting up a new legal order. To begin with, few would dare oppose the imposition of Sharia law, and those who did could be eliminated specifically for that opposition.
Events elsewhere were suddenly to intervene. Following the attacks in the US of 11 September 2001, and the subsequent US-led ouster of the Taliban from power, Sufi Muhammad took tens of thousands of people (mainly from Swat and his native Dir) to wage a holy war against the Americans in Afghanistan. His warriors were equipped with little more than shotguns and ancient rifles, and thousands ended up dying while many more were captured. Sufi Muhammad himself made a hurried return to the Pakistan border, where he was arrested and put in prison until 2008. Some say this may have saved his life, as the relatives of those he had led to their deaths wanted revenge.
With Sufi Muhammad behind bars, the leadership of the TNSM eventually passed to his son in law, Fazalullah, who later gained fame as the 'Radio Mullah' for his popular broadcasted sermons. As his influence grew, so too did the danger posed by Fazalullah; soon, he was openly challenging the state from his stronghold in Swat. Eventually, he teamed up with the Taliban in the FATA, in particular the Waziristan warlord Baitullah Mehsud. What had begun as a madrassa with a militant radio had grown into a full-blown insurgency.
In 2007, a Pakistan Army operation codenamed Rah-e-Haq (the Right Path) met with modest success. Security personnel managed to force the extremist elements to flee to a remote mountainous area of Gat Peuchar, in upper Swat. The way in which the military action was carried out – heavy guns, indiscriminate shelling and crushing curfew hours – resulted in increased Taliban brutality. Life became unbearable for the people of Swat and thousands fled the conflict zone. It is important to note that, when given a fair chance, the people of Swat have always sided with the government – and with each army retreat or ceasefire, have paid for that support with their lives. Even by the government's own reckoning, the Taliban and other militants numbered only 2000-4000. It was, therefore, incomprehensible for the common citizen to believe that they could hold the world's seventh-largest army at bay for so long. The result was fear of military-Taliban collusion for some, and a morbid despair for others.
Indeed, the government was quickly losing the battle both for territory and for hearts and minds. The Taliban in Swat have developed a clear strategy. Its leaders have a definitive vision of the society they want to establish, which they articulate several times every day in their sermons and over the FM broadcasts. Meanwhile, a government, facing multiple crises, is unable to provide the kind of stability and growth the people want. Neither is it able to succeed in military action against brutal guerrillas who function in terrain favourable to armed insurgency. Against such a backdrop, it is not unnatural for the population to become neutral observers, even as their livelihoods are destroyed.
In Swat, Taliban officials have attacked all symbols of government power and influence, including schools, basic health units and, in particular, police stations. It has managed to cow the populace with its mix of populism and punishment, but there are questions as to how far it can continue to subjugate in this way. The ideology, after all, is suspect. The campaign to enforce Sharia, for instance, is clearly little more than a vehicle to acquire legitimacy for this new Taliban regime – hardly to satisfy popular demands in Swat. The people seem to be the least of the Taliban's concerns; their lot is to be subdued through violence and terror.
Two deals
The Awami National Party (ANP), the senior partner in the newly elected coalition government in NWFP, contested the February 2008 elections on the promise of bringing peace to the province. But articulating the basics of such a peace remained problematic. Perhaps seeing no immediate end to the military operation, in May 2008 the NWFP government entered into a 'peace' agreement with the Tehrik-i-Taliban, Swat, thus ending the military operation. Sufi Mohammad was also released as a gesture of goodwill.
Under the terms of the agreement, the NWFP government agreed to impose Sharia in Swat. Particular stress was placed by government officials on the fact that the available legal framework was sufficient to enforce Sharia – meaning that no changes in law were required – and that only the performance of the institutions concerned needed 'improvement'. But the deal was silent on major areas of concern for the people of Swat. For instance, it contained no provision for the disarmament of the Taliban, nor for justice for the crimes committed. Most importantly, there was no body tasked with monitoring the implementation of the agreement.
When it no longer suited their interests, the Taliban simply stopped abiding by the terms of the peace deal, and the deal was ultimately called off in June 2008. Many believe that it was Baitullah Mehsud who asked the Swat Taliban to back out. Initially, the Peshawar government tried its best to save the deal, going so far as to deny that the Swat Taliban was blowing up schools, something for which the latter later claimed proud responsibility. But by October 2008, the Taliban had returned to the battlefield with a vengeance. The peace deal had provided a crucial respite, during which Taliban fighters were able to consolidate their position and prepare for the next round of battle.
Ultimately, the experience surrounding this first peace deal underlined two facts. First, it is futile to enter into any type of agreement with a group that is convinced of the righteousness of its cause, and which justifies any means in order to achieve its objectives. Second, Taliban leaders use peace deals as a way to consolidate their position, and have no intention of abiding by the terms of the agreement when they are to their disadvantage or outlive their utility.
So, the Taliban atrocities resumed, as did the army operation. This time around, Baitullah Mehsud's group, famed for its effective suicide bombings, specifically targeted the ANP in the province, and a spate of suicide bombings nearly paralysed its leadership. The resumption of army action achieved little, however. During the second phase of the Rah-e-Haq, the area under Taliban control actually increased from 20 percent to nearly 80 percent of Swat District. The pirate FM radio, essential for the Taliban's strategy, continued to operate unchallenged. Many more schools were blown up, hundreds of people were killed, and hundreds of thousands displaced – some due to Taliban brutality, many more because of indiscriminate army shelling. In total, the Taliban has destroyed some 191 schools, 122 of which were for girls, affecting an estimated 62,000 children.
Clearly something needed to give. So it was that, around the end of 2008, the ANP leadership began promising that it would soon have some good news to report, an oblique reference to ongoing secret negotiations with the Taliban. Finally, in mid-February 2009, details of the latest peace deal were announced. Central to the eventual deal was the promulgation of a new regulation for PATA – the Nizam-e-Adl (Sharia) Regulation, 2009, which would bring Sharia to Swat. (The Zardari government, meanwhile, is yet to sign the regulation.)
Surprisingly, the deal was not signed with the Swat Taliban, as was the previous one, but rather with Sufi Muhammad. In turn, he was supposed to prevail over his estranged son-in-law, Fazalullah, by claiming that the new regulation had indeed brought Sharia to Swat, and that therefore there was no further need for a religious movement. In fact, such a strategy would only make sense if there were to be an undisclosed understanding to this effect with both Fazalullah and Baitullah Mehsud. (The device of signing the deal with a third party, meanwhile, supposedly allowed the ANP to claim that it had not signed a deal with the militants – as Sufi Muhammad, the public was now being told, was never a militant.) If there is no such understanding, however, then the government has signed a deal only with a 'property dealer' (to use a commercial analogy), assuming that he will prevail over the owner to part with his property. In any case, in any plan involving Sufi Mohammad, failure and success would empower one militant group or the other in Swat – either the TNSM or the Taliban.
Once again, the peace agreement has no provisions for disarmament, justice or amnesty for the militants, or for a monitoring body. The central assumption of the second peace deal is that the people of Swat want Sharia. It was ignored that the Taliban was attacking and taking over the justice system in Swat in order to establish its own authority, hardly for the benefit of the population. Taliban leaders would not accept any change to the system unless it were to give them legal authority and some legitimacy. In other words, the Taliban would guarantee a ceasefire only in return for sovereignty. In light of this understanding, the new deal will almost certainly result in another nightmare for the people of Swat (and much of the rest of PATA): that of Taliban-administered justice, the examples and implications of which are already widely known.
Nizam-e-Adl
At this point, several critical points appear to have fallen by the wayside. First, few seem to recall that the Sharia Nizam-e-Adl Regulation, 1999 – which had, to the satisfaction of the TNSM, brought the legal system in line with Sharia – is still operative in Swat, which was deemed sufficient by the Swat Taliban in May 2008. Second, the new regulation will affect not only Swat, but also five other districts of NWFP (Buner, upper and lower Dir, Shangla and Chitral). And third, the demand for the imposition of Sharia is emanating from no more than 4000-odd militants who have taken up arms against the state, who have brutally murdered thousands of innocent people, and who recognise neither the state nor the Constitution of Pakistan. And, if experience is any guide, the Taliban will not be abiding by any signed agreement.
Before its promulgation, the outlines of the new agreement remained a closely guarded secret. No consultations were held and no opinions were sought on a law that would bring major changes to lives of the millions of people living in PATA in NWFP. Indeed, the regulation was not even shared with the hundreds of lawyers practicing in PATA, let alone the judiciary. As important, the ramifications of the new regulation would entail a stark departure from how the Pakistani judiciary has functioned over the past six decades. It has been an important principle of Pakistan's legal system that judges, especially those in the subordinate courts, do not question the law, but merely enforce it. And while the superior courts can question a law, they can do so only if it appears to come into conflict with a provision of the Constitution. Similarly, judges have not been allowed to propound their own formulations of what exactly constitutes Islamic law. For that purpose, the Pakistani Constitution establishes separate institutions. Even during General Zia ul-Haq's so-called Islamisation process, the courts were not granted the authority to rule on what constituted Sharia.
This judicial tradition is now set to change dramatically. The new regulation intends to give subordinate judges the discretion not to enforce a provision of a law, or even the entire law, if in their opinion it conflicts with Sharia. More importantly, it even allows such judges to come up with their own interpretations of Sharia. The regulation also makes another sharp departure from established principle in bringing the police under the judiciary, thus violating the principle of separation of powers. Further, it appears that the qazi (or judge) will have a fairly important position, with the regulation holding that, "The conduct and character of each Qazi shall be in accordance with the Islamic principles." From this, we can be certain that the Taliban would have a say in who is appointed to the bench. Thus, in one stroke, under what is being purported by the government to be a peace deal, the Taliban has been able to get rid of both the laws and the police.
Yet such has been the level of violence and sheer terror created by the Taliban that the residents of Swat have been grateful for this respite in the conflict, which has been made possible by the agreement and the resulting regulation. Immediately after the ceasefire, the one question on the mind of everyone in Swat was: Will the ceasefire hold? Yet much as anyone might sympathise with the people of Swat and hope for the best, the current circumstances cannot hold. The people of Swat deserve better. They deserve to live under a peace guaranteed by the state, where their fundamental rights are guaranteed – not upon diktat backed by the fear of Taliban beheadings. The situation in Swat today remains very fragile. The Taliban can rightly claim success in bringing the area under its own brand of Sharia, on its terms and not under the laws of the land. Meanwhile, the Taliban fighters have neither put down their arms nor given up their positions. In fact, many observers now warn that they are using this period of truce to dig themselves in even further, as well as to increase their strength in other parts of the district.
At the time of writing, it appears as though this latest deal with the Swat Taliban will inevitably lead towards the legitimisation of their brutal tactics. Certainly that is how the Taliban will interpret it. Will the agreement ultimately form the basis of the creation of the 'Taliban Emirate of Swat', providing impetus to Taliban groups in other districts of the NWFP? Militants with the Swat Taliban have openly challenged the state, killing thousands, terrorising millions, and all the while strengthening their links and strategic partnerships with other militant groups in the region. Are its members to be allowed to get away with such blatant acts – without facing justice, renouncing violence or even laying down their arms? If the answer to these questions is in the affirmative, then the government of Pakistan will have traded its sovereignty for an illusory ceasefire.