Missing the essence of Talibanism

[Muradk]

I think we are not getting it. Talibanism in Afghanistan is a revolt against the American occupation. Those who can't see this deserve an extended stay in a re-education camp. From this perspective the true godfather of the Afghan resistance is the United States of America.But Pakistani Talibanism, as represented by Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan and Maulana Fazlullah in Swat, is a slightly different phenomenon. It may have originated as a side-effect of the Afghan war but it has now mutated into something with a personality of its own. With all its primitive and even barbaric permutations — the bombing of schools, the insistence on what amounts to female segregation, the slitting of throats — it is a revolt against the Pakistani state. Or rather a revolt against the dysfunctional nature of this state.
Far from being defeated, much less crushed, this revolt is spreading. Hitherto it was confined to the Frontier Province. But on February 7 we saw this revolt cross the River Indus for the first time when a police check post in Mianwali (Qudratabad near Wan Bachran) was attacked by Taliban fighters. On Feb 11 another police outpost near Essa Khail came under attack.
Mianwali and Bhakkar along the River Indus are vulnerable districts, open to infiltration from the Frontier. If the Taliban acquire any kind of foothold here, God help us. district of Chakwal is a short ride away, as are the districts of Sargodha and Khushab. From there to central Punjab is but a short haul.
But why should anyone be attracted to the Taliban? Don't we know what they stand for? Why should Punjab, of all places, ever afford them a foothold? There's no simple answer to these questions.
But an obvious fact should stare any observer in the face. There is a stratum of privileged people in Pakistan, a middle class which also lives comfortably or gets by reasonably well, and then an entire population of have-nots, with no stake in the existing order of things, whose existence may not be short but it is nasty and brutish all the same. Which are the elements flocking to Mahsud's banner in Waziristan and Fazlullah's in Swat? Not the big Khans or Maliks but the have-nots. Beware Punjab's huge under-class which will be fodder and recruiting ground for the Taliban if the revolt in the north-west, escaping the best ability of the Pakistan military establishment to suppress it, snakes its way into the adjoining districts of Punjab. Every Punjab town, large and small, has a mosque, if not more than one, sympathetic to the Taliban brand of Islam. So at least there is a handy network — a Ho Chi Minh Trail, so to speak down which the ideology of the Taliban can travel, whether we like this ideology or abhor it being a separate issue altogether.If this were Nepal this would be a Maoist uprising. If this were a Latin American country it would be a peasant or a Guevarist uprising. Since it is Pakistan, the revolt assaulting the bastions of the established order comes with an Islamic colouring, Islam reduced to its most literal and unimaginative interpretations at the hands of those leading the Taliban revolt. But then we know that with our Pakhtoon movement there are no halfway measures. They are given to extremes. No wonder then if evangelicalism in their hands has descended to primitivism and barbarism. The ferment in Swat began with Maulana Sufi Muhammad when he called for the establishment of Sharia law. But what is now happening in Swat under the leadership of Maulana Fazlullah, his son-in-law — has outgrown its origins. It is far bigger than anything old Sufi Muhammad could have envisioned.
Similarly, the Afghan resistance and its fallout on Pakistan are now much bigger than Mullah Omar or Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda may be a factor in the larger situation but the Taliban revolt in Pakistan has acquired an impetus of its own. Like a runaway plant it is rearing its head wherever it can reebooters, buccaneers, committed Islamists, all drawn to its cause.
There are people who don't have enough to eat, who don't have a job and no prospects in life. If they are wronged they have no redress. There are people tortured daily in our police stations, people caught up for years in the endless grind of court cases. There is endemic corruption all round. Every government department, without exception, serves itself, not anything as esoteric as the people. If this is not recruiting ground for Talibanism, what is?

Let me give a few examples. Currently in Chakwal a Rupees18 crore project for the laying of sewerage lines is being carried out. The department responsible is Public Health Engineering. It is creating such a mess — drains clogged, streets blocked by dirty water —and the work is so sub-standard that it has triggered a public outcry. When I visited one of the sites officials came up with lame excuses but I told them they were inviting the wrath of the heavens. I asked them to fear the time when people took matters into their own hands and started administering Taliban-style justice. And Chakwal is the place subjected just a week ago to a visit by the Punjab chief secretary. His cavalcade as he tore from one place to another, police hooters screaming in front, was most impressive and also a trifle overdone. Did no one tell him about the mayhem caused by the Public Health Engineering Department?

The central road through Chakwal is being rebuilt and wide drains are being laid on either side. The work is so shoddy that loose sand would be better than the material the contractors are using. Well, the chief secretary has come and gone but the work is as shoddy as before. What did his grand tour achieve?

In police stations across the country money is king. Every incoming chief minister threatens to clean up thana culture. Nothing changes. Indeed, matters far from improving are sliding downhill faster than most of us realise.
The Americans say they want aid to Pakistan to focus on development rather than military assistance. The Biden-Lugar bill, now dead, foresaw assistance of $15 billion over five years. The Obama administration is saying it will tie aid to Pakistan to its performance in fighting Taliban militancy. This thinking presupposes that American aid is what Pakistan needs and what can achieve victory over the Taliban. Experience tends to suggest otherwise.
The Americans gave Pakistan money when Musharraf was president. Well, what did we do with that money and did it enhance our capacity to fight the Taliban? If anything, we have a bigger catastrophe on our hands now than when this aid started coming in. The Americans are pouring money into Afghanistan. Has it stabilized the situation there? Now they are accusing the Karzai administration of massive corruption.
This is the way with third world countries on the dole, especially in a war zone. If dollars alone could do the trick the US would not have lost in Vietnam. Dollars alone cannot prove triumphant in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
If history is any guide, the American effort in Afghanistan is doomed. Not for nothing is it called the graveyard of empires. The Americans will come to this realisation sooner or later but by that time it may be too late for us.
Talibanism is a form of radicalisation. The only way to fight it is through radical leadership. But do we have anything of the kind? The PPP and PML-N are both wedded to the status quo. Both are pro-American, both terrified of getting on the wrong side of the Americans, both incapable of independent thinking.
At a conference in Qatar in December 2003 — attended from Pakistan by Mushahid Hussain, Ejaz Haider of Daily Times and myself — Richard Holbrooke came up with the astounding statement that if the participants chose to speak about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or the Iraq war they would be wasting their time. He spoke like one who was utterly sure of himself, someone who had all the answers. The impression he gave throughout the three-day conference was of being a stuck-up guy. And it's on him that our leadership, civil and military, has been fawning these last few days. Just goes to show the kind of stuff we have.

But this is the best we have, the sum total of our collective political intelligence. And it is with this that we must fight the Taliban revolt. It is not going to be easy.

 

[qsaark]

I think we are not getting it. Talibanism in Afghanistan is a revolt against the American occupation.....It is not going to be easy.

I have been saying similar things but as if they were falling on deaf ears. Hopefully, people will take this writeup more seriously since it is coming from you.

 

[roadrunner]

I do agree with most of that post.

The American occupation is causing the Afghan insurgency to grow.

The Pakistani one is many factors. The drone strikes being one of them. One can see the drone strikes as coming back to haunt the Paksitani state in the future.

Neither insurgency can be defeated by military means. There is no military solution.

It could well be a statement that the politicians need changing. The political system in Pakistan is poisoned and elections are a matter of picking who is better out of bad candidates.

Ideally, a strong leader can emerge that is impervious to the West's demand for democracy, generate a strong infrastructure throughout, and then gradually allow democracy in Pakistan, I would say real democracy (not the current one).

 

[niaz]

I beg to strongly differ with the post, mainly because it goes against historical facts. Taliban controlled Afghanistan when there were no US troops there. These forces were sponsored by ISI and Pakistan government and by the Saudis. Only three countries ever recognized Taliban Afghanistan, these were Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and UAE. Thus the assertion that Taliban in Afghanistan is a reaction to US occupation is incorrect. One can say that Taliban represent and have support of the majority Pashtoon population of Afghanistan against the Farsi speaking Tajiks, Hazara Shias and Turkic Uzbeks.

Northern and Central areas such as Bamian and Mazar Sharif have very little Taliban following, about 200 KM wide belt along the Pakistan border is the Taliban homeland. Hamid Karzai, himself a Pashtoon is seen as an American stooge.

Pakistani Talibans are older than Afghan Taliban, they were simply known by different names. Have we forgotten SSP, TFSN and Lashkar Jhangvi? All of these existed in Pakistan and were nurtured by the bigots such as Zia ul Haq and Hamid Gul. Aim was to use these forces to fight proxy war against India. Now all of these have combined under the Taliban umbrella.

Nearly all of these outfits are of Deobandi/Wahabi maslak. Sectarian problem in Pakistan started soon after the end of the Zia era. Don’t know what ignorant youths which form backbone of the suicide squad think, but the master mind of these Pakistani Taliban have only one purpose; to turn Pakistan into a Sunni Salafin state similar to the one in Saudi Arabia. This goes against the Sufi/ Braelvi maslak that was prevalent in most of Pakistan (especially Punjab) before the bigot Zia usurped power and most certainly against the aims of the founding fathers such the Quaid, Allama Iqbal and Allama Mashriqi.

Deobandi forces were against Pakistan in the first place and know that they can never gain power by a popular vote. Therefore they have exploited religion to obtain their nefarious goal, which is to gain power thru coercion. Regret to say that Urdu mass media is controlled by a strong right wing element which is giving full support to the Wahabi/Salafin extremists.

IMO the article is missing the point not vice versa.

 

[roadrunner]

I beg to strongly differ with the post, mainly because it goes against historical facts. Taliban controlled Afghanistan when there were no US troops there. These forces were sponsored by ISI and Pakistan government and by the Saudis. Only three countries ever recognized Taliban Afghanistan, these were Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and UAE. Thus the assertion that Taliban in Afghanistan is a reaction to US occupation is incorrect.

It's all about time levels.

The Taliban were finished in 2001. There was hardly any resistance. The foreign troops were perhaps even seen as liberators, I think this is not true though. They were seen as an improved hope over the previous regime.

That hope has all but gone.

What was the reason for the rise in strength of the Taliban? It's not Pakistan "havens", it's local support. What drives the local support is that they have had enough of, or see the foreign forces as occupying forces. I think it's more of the latter.

Pakistani Talibans are older than Afghan Taliban, they were simply known by different names. Have we forgotten SSP, TFSN and Lashkar Jhangvi? All of these existed in Pakistan and were nurtured by the bigots such as Zia ul Haq and Hamid Gul. Aim was to use these forces to fight proxy war against India. Now all of these have combined under the Taliban umbrella.

Nearly all of these outfits are of Deobandi/Wahabi maslak. Sectarian problem in Pakistan started soon after the end of the Zia era. Don’t know what ignorant youths which form backbone of the suicide squad think, but the master mind of these Pakistani Taliban have only one purpose; to turn Pakistan into a Sunni Salafin state similar to the one in Saudi Arabia. This goes against the Sufi/ Braelvi maslak that was prevalent in most of Pakistan (especially Punjab) before the bigot Zia usurped power and most certainly against the aims of the founding fathers such the Quaid, Allama Iqbal and Allama Mashriqi.

Deobandi forces were against Pakistan in the first place and know that they can never gain power by a popular vote. Therefore they have exploited religion to obtain their nefarious goal, which is to gain power thru coercion. Regret to say that Urdu mass media is controlled by a strong right wing element which is giving full support to the Wahabi/Salafin extremists.

IMO the article is missing the point not vice versa.

Pakistan Taliban are a mixture of bandits, religious groups and other extreme elements, together with more recent anti-state elements. Those anti-state elements might even have been neutral prior to 2001. I don't think one can argue that there has been a spread in the ideology following 911, that has occurred for many reasons.

 

[asq]

My one question is ? where do they get all that weaponry from.

 

[Muradk]

My one question is ? where do they get all that weaponry from.

Weaponry comes from CHINA.They never had money problems.

 

[niaz]

Quote

The Taliban were finished in 2001. There was hardly any resistance. The foreign troops were perhaps even seen as liberators, I think this is not true though. They were seen as an improved hope over the previous regime.

That hope has all but gone.

What was the reason for the rise in strength of the Taliban? It's not Pakistan "havens", it's local support. What drives the local support is that they have had enough of, or see the foreign forces as occupying forces. I think it's more of the latter.

Unquote

Taliban were never finished. Victory of Northern Alliance forces with US help was at best a pyrrhic victory. Any guerrilla hand book will teach you that when faced with overwhelming odds, best thing is to disappear by mingling with the local population and regroup as soon as the opportunity arises. Taliban warlords are not novices. They are hardened fighters. As soon as the leaders realized that they couldn’t win, they ordered the groups to disperse. Leaders ran away to hide in Pakistan Pushtoon belt and soldiers just mingled with the population and went back to doing the daily chores.

Once the original euphoria disappeared and resentment against US and their stooges gained momentum Taliban regrouped. No different than what Marhattas did to Mughal army under Aurangzeb or Vietcong to the US army. US attacked because Mulla Omer refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, Taliban were not directly involved in the 9/11 and thus not terrorists in the normal sense of the word.

The agenda of Afghan Taliban is therefore to re-impose Pushtoon rule over Afghanistan. They are fighting US because US troops are in the way. Even if US troops were to leave tomorrow, there would be a repeat of the scenario after the Russian withdrawal. Fighting will continue between Pushtoon Taliban and Northern Alliance until one or the other is victor or Afghanistan is divided into two or three independent states.

Pakistani Taliban are the real terrorists. Have we forgotten that Moin Haider as Interior Minister visited Kabul to ask that 100 or so terrorists who were given safe haven in Taliban Afghanistan be handed over? He was of course refused.

There is no doubt that some criminal elements have joined up with extremists under Taliban banner because they know that Taliban would eventually prevail. This is because of an inherent reluctance on the part of PA and general public to fight the mullah. Especially our bigoted media is love with them. The same people who never tired of criticizing lack of action over Lal Masjid turned wholesale against PA when GOP actually decided to take action. We have already seen that Babri mosque was demolished while under the police guard. US Embassy in Islamabad was burned down while a battalion of PA stood by and did nothing. No one had the spine to order to shoot on what appeared to be nice religious people even though the same were actually engaged in criminal activity!

Agenda in Pakistan of all the forces that are now combined under the name of Taliban remains to turn Pakistan into a Wahabi state. This IMO is the essence of Taliban.

 

[niaz]

Another article published in today's News which describes what I want to say in a better way. Thank you Zia ul Haq, Hamid Gul, Hamid Mir and Imran Khan for your part in breaking up what was left of Pakistan after 1971.


Taking on the Taliban



Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Zafar Hilaly

The first battle of a war is psychologically an important one. Pakistan has lost not only the first battle, that for the control of Waziristan, but also the second, for Swat. Agreements cobbled together following both battles have attempted to mask what is a patent fact: the defeat of the army at the hands of the Taliban and the passing of these areas and their inhabitants into the Taliban fold. Further setbacks are likely unless the instruments of war are forged again and a leadership emerges that has the wisdom and will to confront the challenge.

But all is not lost. As they move further east, the Taliban will meet greater resistance from the populace, especially in the cities, where they are loathed. The Wahhabi brand of Islam that the Taliban espouse has never managed to gain traction beyond the deserts of Saudi Arabia, not even among the Arab Diaspora. Had Zia-ul-Haq not embraced it Pakistan too would have been spared. In the 30-or-so million Shias of Pakistan the Taliban face a determined enemy, as they do in Punjab and Sindh and beyond where Sufi Islam predominates. Hence, the danger that the murderous and fanatical cadres of the Taliban pose is less to the creed of the masses and more to the political and economic stability of the country and the institutions of the state.

Had the Taliban been willing to participate in the political life of the country by holding public meetings and jalsas, instead of having recourse to Qurbani Chowks to convey their bloody message or to project their agenda through the media, some sort of compromise might have been possible. (Although that too is doubtful, considering that even the moderates of their ilk, like Sufi Mohammed, believe that democracy is a pernicious Western import and balloting to choose leaders un-Islamic.) Instead, the Taliban are emphatic, as their actions over the course of six years proved in Afghanistan that only their concepts of governance, law, religion, justice and politics will prevail. Happily, their determination to inflict their credo on the country is no fiercer than that of the majority of Pakistanis to resist as the Swatis proved by their brave resistance before they were sold out by the ANP, whose leader remains in hiding in Islamabad. Fortunately, the Taliban by their actions have left few people in any doubt that Pakistan will not be rid of the presence of foreign forces, be able to attract foreign investment, become a hub for regional trade, avoid isolation, ridicule and contempt, and develop, unless they are repulsed. And, likewise, their terrorist ghettos recaptured and cleansed.

The Taliban wage war much as they guard their peace through acts of terror, rape, executions and murder like some other insurgencies such as the ongoing one in Somalia and that of the erstwhile Mau Mau in Kenya. They seek to engender hate and fear amongst the populace so that the government appears helpless, unable to afford protection to the citizenry and hence undeserving of loyalty or support. Specifically targeted are those essential to the functioning of an organised political society such as the police, teachers, health workers, district officials. Having driven away or killed them they create an alternative administration to which the hapless population turn for their needs. The insurgency meanwhile continues until a weak government capitulates or sues for peace which is what happened in Swat and FATA.

How then can the Taliban be defeated?

There is no prescription for certain success. Genocide or the relocation of the entire population, a tactic used by Stalin against the Chechens eight decades ago is unthinkable, for obvious reasons. The "nation building" advocated by counterinsurgency experts is a panacea presently in vogue, but given Pakistan's dismal record of nation building in peaceful areas, to say nothing of war zones, it is a tall order. "Killing every insurgent" is also not the answer because it is normally accompanied by the excessive use of force resulting in collateral damage which generates resentment, gives rise to cries for revenge and acts as a recruiting spur for fresh Taliban inductees. What the Americans term as "legitimation"--i.e., the creation of an authority comprising persons acceptable to both sides--is a more promising idea. As the Taliban refuse to recognise any authority but their own as legitimate and regard Pakistanis as foreigners, it is a non-starter. What therefore remains is to confront the Taliban politically and militarily, and to do so with gusto, imagination and skill, in other words, to fight fiercely when necessary and negotiate purposefully when so required in the hope that eventually reason and reality will win out.

Pakistan is doing neither at present. The fighting effort thus far has at best been half-hearted; and capitulation aptly depicts the current negotiation strategy. Sentiments such as "we cannot fight our own people" are excuses and explanations rather than reasons for the lack of determination in prosecuting the war. And irresolution is responsible for the haste to sue for peace. Surrender of the Swat type will no doubt bring peace. History shows that defeat and surrender do indeed usher in peace but that of the victor not the vanquished, which Pakistan cannot afford. We would do well to remember that when the Taliban conquered Afghanistan in 1996 we too celebrated the peace that ensued. But, as Afghans will confirm, the peace that the Taliban brought was that of the grave. And it is to the grave that our dreams of a progressive, tolerant Pakistan now seem consigned with each Taliban success. The government still has the time to prove its mettle; but if it fails to do so it is more than likely that the populace will take matters into their own hands to ward off the Taliban scourge. There are signs that this dreadful prospect is already happening in at least one of our major cities. The resulting civil war could be catastrophic for Pakistan's well being.



The writer is a former ambassador. Email: charles123it@hotmail.com


Taking on the Taliban