Author: Bill Roggio
Publication: The Weekly Standard
Date: April 10, 2009
URL: http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/04/denial_in_pakistan.asp
Spencer Ackerman passed along statements made
by Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States, at a forum
in Washington yesterday. Ambassador Haqqani has been a vocal critic of Islamist
extremists operating in Pakistan, so it is very disappointing to see him defend
the government's policy of cutting peace deals with the Taliban. Ambassador
Haqqani is not being honest about the nature of these agreements, which I'll
outline below:
Pakistan has not done a peace deal with the
Taliban in Swat Valley. Period. Pakistan has negotiated an arrangement, locally,
with the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammedi of Swat.
Ambassador Haqqani is obscuring the real nature
of the TNSM. The group provided the ideological inspiration for the Afghan
Taliban and is allied with Mullah Omar. The TNSM sent more than 10,000 fighters
into Afghanistan to battle U.S. and Northern Alliance forces during 2001 and
2002. The forces were led by Sufi Mohammed, the leader of the TNSM. The Pakistani
government banned the group, labeling it a terrorist organization, and Sufi
was thrown in jail and stayed there until his release in 2007. The TNSM is
still listed as a banned group. Yet the Pakistani government negotiates with
this terror organization.
Here's the dirty secret the Pakistanis don't
want you to know: they are using the TNSM and Sufi Mohammed as a front to
negotiate with the Taliban. The government can't openly admit that it is caving
to the Taliban, so it props up Sufi as a local, respected leader who claims
to have eschewed violence, as a face-saving gesture. And Sufi and the Taliban
are fine with that, they get what they want: control of an Islamic emirate.
The president of Pakistan has not signed the
agreement and not approved the agreement yet because he's waiting for the
TNSM to fulfill its end of the bargain, which was, essentially, to make sure
that the Taliban - whose leader happens to be his son-in-law - they do not
continue to use force. Since that has not happened, the agreement has not
been enforced.
The important thing isn't whether the president
signed the law into effect or not. The important thing is that the government
would even consider negotiating with the TNSM in the first place, and then
actively tries to obscure the nature of this group. But even if President
Zardari hasn't approved the agreement, many members of the federal government
support it, and the provincial government signed off on the deal. Also, the
military, which is under the nominal control over the government, is respecting
and endorsing the agreement.
Mullah Fazlullah, Sufi's son-in-law isn't
your run of the mill Taliban leader. He's sponsored numerous suicide attacks,
beheadings and other acts of terror. He actively opposes polio vaccinations
for children, claiming the shots are designed to sterilize the Muslim people.
And he's a senior deputy in Baitullah Mehsud's unified Pakistani Taliban movement.
Sufi has openly sided with the Taliban during negotiations and after the cease
fire was implemented.
Another point Haqqani is glossing over: the
agreement actually is being enforced. The government established the sharia
courts on March 15, the date the Taliban and the TNSM demanded. Sufi hand-selected
the judges. The Taliban shut down the secular court system and continued to
attack the security forces. The government willfully papered over these incidents
in an effort to keep the agreement alive.
Here's what I mean when I say that the shorthand
about Pakistan is based on an assumption that Pakistan is unable to change.
Pakistanis went to the polls on February 18, 2008. They elected a leadership
that ran on the platform saying that fighting terrorism is our first priority.
They elected the party of someone who was killed by terrorists for standing
up against terrorism. So the people of Pakistan, quite clearly, have a preference
for fighting terrorism.
Immediately after winning the election, the
Pakistani government cut peace deals with the Taliban throughout the tribal
areas and the Northwest Frontier Province. Many of us don't take that as a
strong commitment to fight terrorism.
Does Pakistan have a complex situation, political
and power equation? Absolutely. But at the same time I think we need to make
distinctions and we need to understand how the various shades of grey operate
in Pakistan.
As shown above any distinctions being made
between the TNSM and the Taliban should end at the naming of the groups. Pakistan
would have a far less "complex situation, political and power equation"
if it made far fewer distinctions.
That said, we will make sure that the Swat
Valley is cleared of the extremist Taliban and the violent extremists that
have been operating there.
The Pakistani government and military tried
this three other times, and each time was roundly defeated. Why else are they
so eager to cut peace deals with the Taliban - or the TNSM if we are to believe
Haqqani? Perhaps the fourth time is a charm?
There have been many reasons for us to respond.
Recently there was a video shown on Pakistani television and it really galvanized
the nation into recognizing that the Pakistani nation does not want to tolerate
people that do not respect basic human rights.
Two years of relentless suicide attacks, murders,
beheadings, and other terror attacks conducted on a daily basis against the
police, the military, government officials, and civilians wasn't enough to
galvanize the nation? If such horrific attacks haven't awakened the Pakistanis
to the existential threat to the nation, why should the whipping of a young
girl, an act which many Pakistanis claim is a plot to foil the peace deal
and defame Islam?
There are military difficulties in different
parts of Pakistan, and different parts of the Pakistani tribal areas, as well
as in Swat, which we will be able to deal with much better when the capacity
of our military is built to the level where we can be an effective counterinsurgency
force.
The Pakistani military has been claiming it
will revamp its forces to effectively fight a counterinsurgency for years.
But they've done little to realize this goal. Instead, they claimed the U.S.
has been holding out on vital equipment such as F-16s, attack helicopters,
and night vision goggles. Counterinsurgency isn't about equipment, it's about
the people that fight it. The Pakistanis have done little to change their
tactics. They continue to raze villages, murder civilians, and enflame the
very people they are supposed to be protecting. The military is more concerned
about parking its best forces on the Indian border and sending it's poorly
armed and trained Frontier Corps and other paramilitary units into the northwest.
This has yielded predictable results: failure upon failure. Again, why else
would they cut deals if they have been performing so well?
And perhaps Ambassador Haqqani should explain
why elements within the ISI and military actively support the Taliban and
al Qaeda, to this day.
