But, ironically, instead of quelling extremism, the military occupation has fueled it. Radical Islamic clerics throughout Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal belt now preach the hard-line gospel, day and night. Their fiery jihadist sermons exhort people to live by the harsh code of Islamic Sharia–or else. In Wana, the capital of the South Waziristan tribal agency, extremists recently used dynamite to blow up a radio station for playing music. If these radicals sound like Pakistan’s equivalent of Mullah Mohammed Omar’s ousted Taliban regime, they are. The tribal militants call themselves “Pakistani Taliban,” or members of a newly coined and loosely knit entity, the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan. They openly recruit young men to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan and run their own Islamic kangaroo courts that, on occasion, stage public executions. The local police simply stay out of the way. “Fearing for their lives, no one dares to challenge them,” says Afrasiab Khattak, former chairman of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
The Pakistani Army has had some success. It’s killed 180 foreign fighters and captured some 300 foreign-born militants, including Qaeda operatives, in periodic fighting, according to military spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan. He says some 370 local militants have also been killed. But the Pakistani Army has also paid a high price, losing 350 of its troops. And on balance, the Army has little to show for all the carnage. “There has been some success in hunting down Al Qaeda,” says retired Pakistani Army Lt. Gen. Talat Masood. “But there has only been failure in terms of controlling the local Taliban.”
Not only are the Pakistani militants now stronger than ever, the links between the pro-Taliban, ethnic Pashtun tribes in Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban across the border, who are also Pashtuns, have been strengthened. The resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, who last week briefly captured two district towns in southern Afghanistan, has only increased the morale and muscle of their Pakistani brethren. “What was a containable problem has spun out of control,” says Ayaz Amir, a political columnist for the Dawn daily newspaper. The invigorated Pakistani militants have boosted their recruiting of Afghan and local youths studying in madrassas along the mountainous border, and are sending them into Afghanistan to fight. “There is now a greater cross-border traffic between Waziristan and Afghanistan than before the Army moved in,” adds Amir. And both Waziristan and the border areas of neighboring Baluchistan have become even more hospitable rear bases and havens for Taliban commanders and fighters.
Before the military moved into the tribal areas, the militants had been sympathetic with, but not actively committed to, the Afghan Taliban’s cause. Now that has changed. “The military’s presence has brought no plus for the tribals,” says General Masood. “It has made them more angry, dissatisfied, antigovernment and actively pro-Taliban.” Perhaps more important, the Army’s occupation upset the traditional governing balance in the tribal areas, which has changed little from the days of British colonial rule. The tribal agencies are not governed by Pakistan’s Constitution or legal codes. Rather, government-appointed political agents hold sway by offering patronage (chiefly large amounts of money) to maliks, or tribal elders, who are charged with maintaining law and order according to custom. But as an occupying force, the Army took control over everything from security to development. “It marginalized the maliks and the entire administrative system, and didn’t replace it with anything other than military rule,” says General Masood. “That was a huge mistake. It created a vacuum that was quickly filled by the militants.”
This Pakistani neo-Taliban force has fought aggressively. Nowadays, no Army convoy can move through Waziristan without an escort of helicopter gunships. Over the past year the local Taliban has killed more than 100 pro-government maliks, and many more have fled the tribal areas in terror. Scores of so-called military collaborators have been murdered. General Sultan strongly denies that the Taliban is running the show. “To say that these people are in control is too much of an exaggeration,” he insists. In a nationally televised address to the nation late last week, Musharraf acknowledged the “wave of Talibanization in tribal areas” but vowed “not to tolerate this regressive trend.”
But the president seems to be in a bind. He’s already tried military force, and there are political considerations besides. He doesn’t want to alienate Pakistan’s pro-Taliban and pro-militant religious parties, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, or MMA, which he may need in next year’s parliamentary elections. To that end, the government employed MMA leader Fazlur Rehman to negotiate a monthlong ceasefire with the militants, which expires at the end of this month. To formalize a peace deal with the militants, the government has organized a 45-man Loya Jirga, or tribal council, consisting of tribal notables, including several MMA leaders, that began meeting in Miramshah last week. As a price for peace, the militants are demanding that the government release more than 60 jailed extremist leaders and that the Army dismantle its checkpoints in Waziristan. In a sign of good will last week the government dismantled two checkpoints on key regional highways and released 34 militant leaders.
Most Pakistanis are skeptical of the proposed peace deal. In the past, similar arrangements broke down because the militants simply failed to honor them. “Peace needs to be made … but it should not come at the expense of the area’s Talibanization,” declared an editorial in The News, a Pakistani English-language daily, this month.
According to General Sultan, the government’s main aim is to restore the rule of its political agents and tribal maliks, and then bring economic development to the largely backward and impoverished area. General Masood asserts that a “return to the past” won’t work. He believes a whole package of economic, legal and political reforms needs to be introduced into the tribal agencies so that complete integration with Pakistan is an attractive alternative for tribals, the majority of whom are moderate.
Meanwhile, Musharraf scrambles to placate everyone. He tries to keep the domestic religious parties happy while assuring his Western allies that he’s doing all he can to end Islamic radicalism. “He seems to be sitting on the fence,” says a frustrated European diplomat in Islamabad who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of his remarks. If the president continues to do so, extremism will only get worse–and so will the fighting in Afghanistan.
