Deal only hope for regaining Swat control

Tom Hussain, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: February 06. 2009 9:30AM UAE / February 6. 2009 5:30AM GMT

Local residents load their belongings into a truck as they flee from Shamuzai, a troubled area of Pakistan's Swat Valley. Sherin Zada / AP Photo

ISLAMABAD // Political parties in Pakistan’s restive North West Frontier Province (NWFP) are pushing for a negotiated settlement with Taliban militants who now control about three-quarters of the Swat valley, 130 kilometres north-west of Islamabad.

“The military operation has been proven useless and fruitless. Before the operation, the Taliban was in control of 25 per cent of Swat; now they control 75 per cent,” said Syed Ala ud Din, a member of parliament from Swat associated with the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), headed by Asif Ali Zardari, the president.

Like other candidates in the Feb 2008 elections, conducted during a military operation, he campaigned by telephone from Peshawar and Islamabad, and won amid abysmally low voter turnout. He was unable to visit his constituency then and has not been since, during which time his Khwazakhela residence has become the local Taliban headquarters.

Mr Ala ud Din confirmed a newspaper report on Tuesday that Sufi Mohammed, the father-in-law of the Swat Taliban head, Maulana Fazl Ullah, had sent a draft peace agreement to the NWFP government, headed by the Pukhtun nationalist Awami National Party.

“I have heard that they have the agreement, but will be working with my colleagues to persuade the president to approve it,” he said.

Mr Mohammed was the founder of the 1990s Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammedi movement that successfully agitated for the introduction of Islamic courts in Swat and other districts of the Malakand region in 1993. His armed activists, drawn largely from the ranks of landless peasants, had blockaded road links between Swat and the rest of the Malakand region, and occupied the airport at Saidu Sharif.

While federal security forces then succeeded in quelling the mini-insurgency, the government accepted popular demands for an Islamist judiciary, changing the nomenclature of civil judges to qazi, and appointing scholars to assist them in delivering rulings within two weeks. The system was changed back after elections in 1997.

However, Mr Mohammed lost popular support after recruiting thousands of ill-armed, untrained tribesmen to fight US forces invading Afghanistan in 2001. Most were killed in air strikes and Mr Mohammed surrendered himself to Pakistani authorities in Peshawar to avoid facing wrathful relatives in Swat.

His movement was taken over by Fazl Ullah, who had previously made his living operating a cross-river cable cart service for residents of Mandherei village near Sanghota. Mr Mohammed’s son-in-law spent five years repairing the lost credibility of the movement, leading an ominous-sounding but largely peaceful campaign for the introduction of an Islamist judiciary.

He changed tilt in 2007 after hundreds of students from Swat were killed in a military operation against the Lal Masjid seminary in Islamabad. Shortly after, the movement linked up with militants in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas on the border with Afghanistan, and adopted the Taliban brand.

Residents, journalists and politicians said the Swat Taliban’s brazenness has peaked over the last two months. Militants rapidly expanded their territory during December and early January, filling a vacuum created by the repositioning of Pakistani military assets during post-Mumbai-carnage tensions with India.

Mr Fazl Ullah, has tightened his grip from his FM radio pulpit, broadcasting daily between 8.30pm and 11pm. His rulings initially fell broadly into two categories: indictments against persons deemed to be in violation of his extremist interpretation of Islamic law, particularly law enforcement personnel, and edicts governing aspects of day-to-day life.

“Absolutely everyone listens to the daily radio broadcasts, because they don’t know if a rival has made an accusation that puts them on the list. It gives them an opportunity to present their side of the case to the Taliban, and be acquitted in the following day’s broadcast,” said a Mingora resident widowed by the Taliban, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Nonetheless, enforcement has been ruthless, with those daring to resist kidnapped and executed, and their often-beheaded bodies displayed at road junctions in towns across the valley. The victims have included police and paramilitary personnel, leaders of poorly armed community militia, and even orthodox clerics who supported the introduction of an Islamist judiciary but were critical of the Taliban’s murderous methods.

Non-fatal measures have been the demolition of girls’ schools, followed by an edict approving education for females up to the fourth grade, and the enforcement of a graduated scale of fees charged by doctors, graded against their qualification.

This has been less a process of elimination of individuals and more one of eradicating and replacing the state machinery. The “accused” are given the opportunity to repent, by calling the cellular phone numbers of the two top Taliban commanders, Muslim Khan and Shah Dawar Khan, advertised daily in Pushto-language newspapers printed in the district capital, Mingora, in defiance of the resident army garrison. The same newspapers have been flooded with advertisements displaying affidavits from police and local administration personnel announcing their resignations.

The ante has been raised since late January, when the calming of rhetoric between Islamabad and New Delhi facilitated the launch of a military campaign to push back the Swat Taliban. Artillery and helicopter gunship shelling of Taliban positions have, according to military spokesmen, killed between 30 and 70 militants a day (out of an estimated total of 2,500, of which about 1,000 are local) over the last week. Journalists covering the story scoff at those numbers.

“The Taliban are far more upfront about their losses and tend not to make incredible claims. Therefore, readers treat their statements as more credible than the government’s. Clearly, the militants are winning the propaganda war,” commented a national newspaper journalist, who also asked not to be named.

Mr Fazl Ullah’s response to the campaign came in two headline-grabbing hit lists: one issued on Jan 25 was a who’s who list of the region’s politicians, ranging from members of the federal parliament to ministers of the North West Frontier provincial government and local government representatives. The second, broadcast on Feb 3, extended the ultimatum to all employees of the state, judges and lawyers.

The earlier of the two is seen largely as propaganda; all but a handful fled to Peshawar and Islamabad in mid-2007, when violence first erupted in the area. The latter edict has been immediately effective, causing an instant and indefinite suspension of the judiciary, in effect the last functioning arm of the state.

Amid the upsurge in violence, the resident population is in as much danger of being killed by poorly aimed artillery guns as they are from the Taliban.

Mr Ala ud Din estimates more than 1,000 civilians have died as collateral damage since 2007, and about 200,000 have been displaced. Those remaining are confined to their homes during curfews that are often longer than officially announced, often without electricity and amid constant shortages of food and household goods.

Understandably, many residents are outright paranoid of the government, and especially of security forces.

“Do they mean to say that you can’t track publicly published cellular phone numbers or a radio station that broadcasts for two-and-a-half hours daily?” mocked an affluent refugee resident in Islamabad.

thussain@thenational.ae