Plain Words
The Taliban are succeeding
LAST week saw two suicide attacks. The first was aimed at killing Asfandyar Wali, the Chief of Awami National Party -- an old secular democratic party in NWFP's Charsadda.
The second attempt in Punjab was on a relatively less prominent target. But its significance is sectarian. Immediately after the attack sectarian riots broke out in Bhakkar as well as in the nearby Frontier district of DI Khan.
This illustrates Taliban's two outstanding characteristics. The high profile targeting of the ANP chief, whose party had, in the February election, trounced the MMA that was ruling NWFP for the past five years, was natural. They have now been operating outside the tribal areas. It means their network of supporters worked in unison. It shows an efficient organisation. The choice of ANP chief as the target shows the fundamental character of the raging civil war.
The Taliban are Islamic zealots: intolerant, extremist and ferociously violent. On the other hand, ANP was a secular party that defeated the MMA government, that obviously sympathised with the Taliban's cause. The government's sympathies and inaction in politics would help any violent organisation. Their anger, therefore, is understandable and Pakistanis ought to know a civil war is underway. This is between modernist Muslims who are prepared to install secular democracy and the Taliban.
The second target in Bhakkar was a Shia legislator of the PML (N). His selection can be attributed to either local reasons or a deeper political game by the enemies of PML (N). In any case, the sectarian Shia-Sunni riots that spread from Bhakkar to DI Khan show that Taliban's characteristics also include their sectarian intolerance. They consider killing Shias their duty.
This character of Taliban, and others of the ilk, is nothing new. It is now the harvest that has grown from the seeds that were sown by a former military ruler, General Ziaul Haq. He created Sunni and Shia sectarian organisations to divide the people and ensure they didn't unite against his rule.
The point is that the country has far too many organisations that preach the kind of jihad that Taliban are pursuing. These organisations had earlier operated as sectarian organisations. Now the number of such organisations has grown. Their jihad is against the west for defending Islam and attaining Paradise.
Their origins lay in the combined efforts of the western intelligence services in the late 1970s and early 1980s in producing the Mujahideen fired with the zeal first to go out to kill the Godless Soviet soldiers that had occupied Afghanistan. They took money, equipment, ammo supplies, rations and every other support from the west, and were led by Pakistan's own ISI. They succeeded. Pakistan became a suzerain-like power over Afghanistan, and a Pakistani PM (Nawaz Sharif) went with a government manufactured in Peshawar and installed it in Kabul as the Afghan government.
Pakistani generals were happy. Their prayers for a strategic depth for Pakistan had been answered -- with the strong Western material support and pro-west Arab powers. The rule of the seven religious parties lasted for one and half years, but later it fizzled out amidst many civil wars and the country, after 1993, became a political wasteland dominated by countless warlords with no sign of a government.
The Pakistani generals, once they saw that the Rabbani government governed little territory, went to work with renewed zeal. Not many details are known about how precisely the Taliban were created, but they were brought into Afghanistan from Pakistani madrassas of JUI. Even now the JUI is a part of the government and works both sides of the street, trying to keep both Taliban and the West pleased.
These madrassas produced Islamic fanatics. Where they found funds, equipment and best of the paraphernalia of a big guerilla movement is only partially known. It is doubtful that Pakistan could have spent all that much money in training, recruiting and paying the volunteers and equipping them with sorts of weapons, ammunition of various kinds. The presumption is that even in this second round of the production of Islamic zealots the West had contributed.
By 1996, the Taliban had succeeded in conquering much of Afghanistan. Only the Northern Areas, peopled by ethnic minorities, remained outside their control. They formed the government of their own with Mullah Umar as its chief, who soon declared himself to be the rightful Caliph of all Muslims, worthy of support by all Muslims.
A few years ago the Deoband seminary celebrated 100 years of its existence. The celebrations took place in India and also in Pakistan, because JUI was a component of JUH and has been a part of governments in the NWFP and as also at the centre during Musharrafs's period.
The collected Ulema of the Deoband seminary from India as well as Pakistan declared that it was the duty of all Muslims everywhere to support the Caliphate of Mullah Muhammad Umar. The implication was that it was incumbent on them to recognise him as the rightful Caliph of Islam and it could be feared that before long it would acquire sacerdotal and even a sacred character.
That should make us worry because if Islam is as intolerant, violent and unmindful of human rights as Taliban is, Pakistan's future will be in grave jeopardy. Let's ask a simple question: who is a typical Taliban? He has to be located in the Muslim society. He is an ordinary Muslim of the Sunni of the Hanafi Fiqah as interpreted by Deoband seminary.
The difficulty is that the Hanafi Sunnis also have another Maslak called the Barelvis. They are a more relaxed lot. And so there are Barelvi Taliban also. Isn't there the Lashkar Ansar operating in the Bara and Torkham areas? There is also Swat's TSNM party. They have their own volunteers and Taliban. 70% of all Muslims in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh are Hanafi Fiqah Sunnis. Barelvis are concentrated in urban parts of Pakistan and India, though not so many in Bangladesh.
A Talib is an ordinary Sunni Muslim to be found in most parts of the subcontinent. The fact is that he can be converted into a ferocious intolerant and violent jhadi in no time. It is a terrifying prospect especially when there are so many politically ambitious people around who can do with a Taliban group so as to give them political importance and profits out of what the Taliban do.
The second fact is also terrifying. Taliban have established themselves as rulers of many areas that during day-time remain discreet and prudent, without unnecessarily provoking coercive apparatus of the Pakistani state. But after dark they rule and administer justice; they provide what security there is to the people of the area and they are the effective government.
They have more or less displaced the Pakistan state, virtually controlling the entire tribal belt along the Durand Line, and have forced the Pakistan state's paramilitary police and other forces to remain confined to their posts and stations. At night they lock themselves in while Taliban conduct their governing business.
This prospect is what would prevent Pakistan from becoming a modern democratic state that gives equal rights to all its citizens without discrimination. The prospect is depressing. More so because the west, in its blind zeal to kill or capture as many Taliban, al-Qaeda and other militants as possible, is promoting their cause rather than suppressing or displacing it. The same situation obtains over large parts of Afghanistan. The threat is that Pakistan might become another Afghanistan joined at the hip.
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