By HARIS GAZDAR (Economic & Political Weekly)
(Haris Gazdar (gasht@yahoo.com) is a political economist who works with the Karachi-based Collective for Social Science Research.)
The Pakistani military finally appears to have embraced the war against jihadi militancy as its own. If so, an important shift in perception and policy has taken place. Past experience, however, demands caution before coming to any hasty conclusions. Things are chaotic enough in any case, for there to be sufficient material evidence to support optimists and sceptics alike. It is possible, nevertheless, to post milestones that will need to be crossed if we are to decisively move in the right direction.
Swat was always going to be the first test of the Pakistani military’s will for confronting jihadi militancy. Recent reports suggest that the will has been found. After months of losing ground to the militants, the state’s forces now have the initiative. A full-scale military operation supported by air power seems to have loosened the grip of Maulana Fazlullah’s Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Swat on the scenic valley.Military action was accompanied by a large-scale exodus from the region – something that has now become a recurrent pattern in confrontations between the military and the jihadi militants. It is estimated that some three million people have left their homes for safer places in anticipation or as a result of the war. Military sources claim that over 1,200 Taliban and their supporters have been killed, and nearly a hundred, including foreign militants, have been captured. Military losses are put at around 80 deaths. There is no word on civilian non-combatant casualties.
It is difficult to directly verify most of these claims. The number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) who are registered at relief camps hovers around the 2,00,000 mark. While this is a huge figure in its own right, it represents a small fraction of the three million IDPs claimed by government and UN agencies alike. It is argued that most IDPs live with their relatives and friends in safer areas, and have chosen not to register for relief. This claim is, obviously, hard to verify. In any case, there is a humanitarian crisis, and it is officially acknowledged that populations are advised to leave their homes in areas where military operations are imminent.
The confusion surrounding IDP numbers is nothing compared to different interpretations of the run-up to the military operation. There is agreement that a “peace pact” between the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) government and Maulana Sufi Mohammad, leader of the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) or the movement for the enforcement of Sharia, marked the turning point. Critics of the civilian government say that the secular Awami National Party (ANP) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) were cowed into handing over Swat and the entire Malakand region (consisting of Buner, Malakand, Dir and Chitral districts) to the Taliban. Emboldened, the militants immediately expanded their operations beyond Swat, thus leaving the military little choice but to respond to external pressure.
The descent into war is seen as yet another case of policy confusion – alternate rounds of appeasement and containment – with respect to the Taliban and other jihadi militants. It is quite likely that the present military operation called Rah-e-Haq (the righteous path) will go down the route of previous such endeavours, which generated much sound and fury while leaving the Taliban unscathed. Sceptics fear that like before the Taliban will be back in the driving seat as soon as international (read the United States) optics are satisfied. In the meanwhile, the secular parties will have given up further ground to the jihadis.
A more optimistic view is that the Swat peace deal was a classic set-up. The peace deal delinked the jihadi demand for Sharia enforcement from their quest for political power. The government itself took over the responsibility for enforcing Sharia in the Malakand region, and Sufi Mohammad undertook to deliver peace. The government, according to this view, called the Taliban’s bluff. It also disarmed the jihad apologists among mainstream parties and media whose main policy plank was to negotiate with the Taliban. The peace deal was destined for failure, but Sufi Mohammad, his son-in-law Fazlullah and other Taliban leaders made the government’s job easier when they took the deal as a signal to escalate aggression. After that, there was nothing to say in the defence of the Taliban, and the path to war was open.
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