Anti-Taliban campaign begins to show cracks

Isambard Wilkinson, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: May 21. 2009 12:13AM UAE / May 20. 2009 8:13PM GMT

ISLAMABAD // Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said recently that she was “actually quite impressed” with Pakistan’s military offensive against the Taliban in the Swat valley.

Washington has not only greeted the operation with enthusiasm but noted approvingly that Pakistani public opinion has swung behind the military.

Gen David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, stated that there was now a “degree of unanimity” among Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders that they had to fight the Taliban.

The prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, and the army have made unprecedented headway in galvanising support against the Taliban.

“It is a remarkable achievement to win such a consensus and it was because the political parties were accommodating to one another,” said Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a leading Pakistani political analyst.

Indeed, only in March Pakistan’s two main political parties were locked in a paralysing power struggle oblivious to the Taliban’s growing strength.

Popular opinion had already begun to stiffen against the Taliban, particularly after video footage showing Taliban militants flogging a woman in public in Swat horrified Pakistanis. An intensifying wave of attacks across the country and the arrival of militants 100km from the capital, Islamabad, also alloyed public opinion against the Taliban.

The final straw was when militants did not honour a peace agreement granting Islamic law to the Swat valley and refused to lay down their arms.

But analysts say the current consensus is not as monolithic as portrayed and that the “unanimity” will come under intense pressure as the Swat operation continues and the military launches tougher offensives in the border tribal area.

On May 12, members of the national assembly, including the main conservative opposition party of Nawaz Sharif, backed the military operation in Swat.

A prominent religious party, the Jaamat-i-Islami, said the operation was intended to “impose the writ of the US and not that of the Pakistan government”. And another Islamist party, the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, a government ally that has been close to the Taliban in the past, staged a walkout in protest.

However, on Monday, an all-parties conference unanimously adopted a 16-point resolution drafted by the ruling Pakistan People’s Party to unite the country against the Taliban insurgency.

The conference was attended by leaders of 43 major political and religious parties.
Mr Rizvi pointed out that to create a consensus, the PPP was forced to omit any direct mention of the Taliban or the military operation in Swat.

The original resolution drafted by the ruling coalition and endorsing “Operation Rah-e-Rast” [the Right Path] had to be amended to achieve consensus. The resolution finally reaffirmed the parties’ intention to protect and defend Pakistan’s constitution and sovereignty and called for the establishment of the writ of the state.

The political leadership condemned all “violent challenges” to the constitution and the state.

“The opposition parties have offered varying degrees of support to the military operation,” Mr Rizvi said. “Even Nawaz Sharif sometimes offers support for the operation in clear terms, but sometimes he offers ambiguous support.”

Mr Sharif told the conference the Swat operation must continue until the Taliban are eliminated. But he was also of the view that the Swat accord should have been given more time.

Other analysts saw the resolution as wrong-footing dissenters.

“In fact, the support from the main opposition party in a way compelled some of the opposition groups, particularly the Jamaat-i-Islami, Imran Khan’s Tehrik-i-Insaaf and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam either to take a back seat or to dilute their criticism of the ongoing security operation against the Taliban in Swat and adjoining areas,” said Zafar Abbas, a prominent analyst and newspaper editor.

But such is the degree of change in the debate on militancy in Pakistan that Mr Sharif’s party has gone on the record as supporting future operations in the tribal area of Waziristan.

Mr Sharif’s closest lieutenant, Raja Zafarul Haq, said that if similar conditions as Swat prevailed in the Waziristan region, his party would not hesitate to support a military operation there. “It now depends on our internecine politicians to keep the national consensus against terrorism intact and bite the bullet of some collateral damage in the coming days,” said Najam Sethi, a political analyst.

A segment of the religious community, which in the past has been cowed by militants, has voiced its opposition to the Taliban brand of Islam.

Speaking at a conference this week in Islamabad on protecting the country from terrorism threats that was organised by the ministry of religious affairs, clerics vowed to combat militancy. But the entire religious spectrum was not represented: some members of the clergy belonging to the conservative Deoband school of thought did not attend the conference. They said it was an attempt to get the ulema’s endorsement for the action against the Taliban.

The army has also sought to win support for its operation by providing aid for those who have fled the fighting. The army chief, Gen Ashfaq Kiyani, has called upon soldiers to donate one day’s pay to the refugees.

In the past, funerals of soldiers killed fighting the Taliban have been politically sensitive as popular sentiment was against the fighting. This year a father was reported to have refused to accept his son’s body as he regarded him as having died fighting a US war against Muslims.

More recently, the media has given patriotic coverage of several funerals of soldiers killed fighting in Swat. Yet some commentators are uncomfortable with the new orthodoxy surrounding the military operation.

“All we hear are statements and slogans demanding more attacks so that the enemy is crushed once and for all. There is little tolerance for divergent opinion and anyone with a different viewpoint is condemned without realising that we are supposed to be a democratic country,” said Rahimullah Yuzufzai, a veteran journalist from the North West Frontier Province.

And opposition is bound to grow if the plight of the displaced people worsens or if many of the civilians still in Swat are killed when the army tackles Taliban dug into the valley’s main town and other populated centres, Mr Rizvi said.

iwilkinson@thenational.ae