Author: Sushant Sareen
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 11, 2008
This seems difficult with radical Islamism gaining
ground
Lt Gen Asad Durrani, the former ISI chief, dismisses
these conspiracy theories as nonsense. He argues that no military commander
will ever get hundreds of his troops killed and allow a situation to develop
where large parts of the country go out of control of the state. He also defended
his former organisation, ISI, by saying that it is silly to talk of the ISI
as a state within a state. The ISI functions as an instrument of the state and
while there may be individuals in the organisation who harbour sympathy and
share the ideology of the militants, it is impossible for them to go against
the policy framework adopted by the Army high command. He said that at best
such individuals can pass on some information or look the other way in certain
situations.
Notwithstanding the allegations and counter
allegations, the blame-game and political one-upmanship, Pakistan is facing
an alarmingly serious situation on the ground. Pashtun society has undergone
a massive transformation and is getting increasingly radicalised and defiant
and the prime example of this is Swat, whose inhabitants were considered to
be one of the most peaceful and liberal of all Pashtuns.
Pashtun identity, tribal affiliations and religious
zealotry have combined to produce a deadly cocktail to which the Pakistani state
seems to have no antidote. Interestingly, the insurgency has absolutely nothing
to do with Pashtun nationalism because as puritanical Muslims, the Taliban do
not believe in ethnicity. Pashtun nationalists, in fact, are fast becoming irrelevant,
so much so that a journalist friend said that even in their own backyard --
Charsadda -- eight out of 10 people are Taliban sympathisers. Even though publicly
they protest against the military operations by saying that Pashtuns are being
killed, in private they exhort the state authorities to crackdown hard on the
Islamists.
Most of the solutions being offered to the crisis
will either make the situation worse or postpone the problem until such time
when it erupts with even greater virulence. For instance, an all-out military
operation will only alienate the people and drive them into the arms of the
Islamists. On the other hand, if the state engages the militants in a dialogue
and, as many people suggest, gives in to their demands of imposing a Taliban-esque
system, then it will buy temporary peace, which will be used by the Islamists
to consolidate their position until they are ready to make their next big push.
For instance, in Swat, the radical Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-Mohammadi,
which had suffered a major setback after 9/11, distanced itself from Mullah
Fazlullah because it thought he is inviting too much attention something that
could affect the efforts of the organisation to reorganise itself. But once
the fighting started, the TNSM cadre are reported to have joined up with Fazlullah's
followers. Ultimately, the shared aim is not to Islamise only the Pashtun areas
but to impose their vision and their version of Islam in not only Pakistan but
also in Afghanistan.
There is another strategy that people like Interior
Minister Aftab Sherpao advocate. According to Mr Sherpao, since the militants
do not have a unified command structure and individuals heading militant groups
in different areas are not willing to accept the authority of any one person,
the state can play one against the other. Tribal divisions and blood feuds can
also be exploited to divide and rule the turbulent Pashtun tribes. These tactics
paid handsome dividends in South Waziristan when local militants expelled the
Uzbeks from the area with the help of the Army.
But this strategy does not take into account
the fact that the Islamists have established a sort of confederacy of militant
groups, in which differences on the issue of leadership play a secondary role
to the primary objective of imposing a Taliban-type political system. This means
that even though the Pakistani state might succeed in pitting one militant group
against another, the basic demand of Islamisation will remain non-negotiable.