Revolution in the Pakistani
mountains By Syed Saleem
Shahzad
KARACHI - The Taliban have
established a foothold in the Pakistani tribal
areas of North and South Waziristan along the
Afghanistan border, but it is not simply a
question of their having marched in and
established their writ.
Their ability to
impose themselves, which is the result of a
virtual revolution in the region, has far-reaching
consequences for both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
News reports tend to focus on the renewed
capabilities of the Taliban, in terms of their
reorganization, their base in Pakistan,
improved weaponry and their
mass of suicide bombers. What is overlooked in the
troubled tribal areas is an astonishing change in
local dynamics, which neither the British Raj nor
successive Pakistani or Afghan governments had
been able to engineer, the ramifications of which
threaten the existing order of the whole region.
The seeds of a revolution The
seeds of the revolution were sown by former
Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif in the late 1990s,
who introduced electoral colleges in the tribal
areas based on adult franchise. Previously, the
tribal areas had representation in both the upper
and lower houses of parliament, but the delegates
were chosen by the jirga (tribal council)
system.
In terms of this, a few tribal
chiefs sat together and chose representatives from
their ranks. As a result, the tribal chiefs held
all the political clout, and they grew rich and
powerful.
The electoral system broke this
supremacy, and in the most recent general
election, in 2002, the power and base of the
tribal chiefs were destroyed. For the first time,
downtrodden clerics, many of whom owned no more
than an old bicycle or a mud house, were elected
as members of the Senate and the National
Assembly.
This coincided with the
re-emergence of the Taliban, driven out of
Afghanistan in 2001, and in effect the
centuries-old tribal order was no more. Youngsters
in their teens and early 20s became the new
"chiefs", and even took over the jirgas.
More than 100 tribal chiefs were killed; the
remainder either fled to the cities or began a new
life under the rule of poverty-stricken but highly
religiously motivated youths.
Tangled
tribal identities Three major tribes live
in North Waziristan, which has become the
Taliban's prime stronghold outside of Afghanistan:
the Wazirs, the Mehsuds and the Dawar.
British soldiers referred to the Wazirs as
wolves, and the Mehsuds as panthers of the
mountains. The Dawar have traditionally been
peace-loving, preferring shopkeeping to guns and
towns over mountains.
The Mehsud and Wazir
tribes, though, have been arch-rivals for
centuries. Traditionally, the Mehsuds have been
part of the Pakistani establishment, and as
recently as the past few years they supported the
military's actions against Wazir tribes, who are
mostly Taliban.
In today's North
Waziristan, though, Maulana Sadiq Noor and Maulana
Abdul Khaliq are the unbending leaders of the
Taliban-led resistance. They are both Dawar and,
even more startling, the Wazirs and the Mehsuds
are under their command. The man in charge of
launching mujahideen raids into Afghanistan is
Maulana Sangeen, an Afghan from neighboring Khost
province.
In South Waziristan, Haji Omar,
a Wazir, is the leader of the resistance against
Pakistani forces, while Afghan operations run from
the area are taken care of by Abdullah Mehsud, of
the Mehsud tribe.
"Nobody has seen such an
arrangement in centuries, where the Mehsuds and
Wazirs are fighting side-by-side, and more, under
the command of the Dawars," said a local
bureaucrat in Waziristan who spoke to Asia Times
Online on the condition of anonymity.
Command and control system The
revolution that is sweeping across Waziristan is
not confined to the region. It is on the march,
with the eventual targets being Kabul and
Islamabad.
The overall command center is
in South Waziristan, where al-Qaeda No 2 Ayman
al-Zawahiri calls the shots, while Tahir
Yaldevish, leader of the Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan and a key figure in the Afghan
resistance, moves around Paktika province in
Afghanistan.
Well-placed sources in the
Taliban movement who spoke to Asia Times Online
claim that the Taliban communicated "final
messages" to Afghan and Pakistani officials,
warning of direct attacks across both countries
against top army and civilian officials. As a
result, according to the sources, Pakistan stopped
military operations in North and South Waziristan
that were aimed at rooting out Taliban and foreign
forces.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban
strategy is to terrorize Afghan officials and
prevent them from cooperating with foreign forces.
And once the allied forces are alienated, attacks
on them will be intensified.
In both
Afghanistan and Pakistan, skirmishes have already
reached some settled areas: Ghazni and Helmand
have suffered direct Taliban attacks in the
former, while in the latter Bannu and Dera Ismail
Khan in Northwest Frontier Province have seen
attacks recently. On Sunday, six security
personnel and two passers-by were killed and six
others injured when a remote-controlled bomb hit a
police van in Dera Ismail Khan.
At the
same time, the administrations in the capitals of
the two countries are becoming increasingly
isolated. The US-backed ruling royalists in Kabul
are now threatened by Islamists who completely
dominate parliament after recent general
elections.
There is no doubt that radical
Islamists, whether those of the Hizb-i-Islami, the
Ittehad-i-Islami led by Professor Abdul Rasul
Sayyaf, the alliance led by Yunus Qanooni or
dozens of independent former Taliban, are now at
the helm of political affairs in Kabul.
And the US-backed ruling and nominally
secular officers of the Pakistani army are more on
their own than ever before. A silent alliance of
religious elements and religious parties is
keeping a sharp eye on developments in the
mountains, waiting for its chance to join in the
revolution as it rolls off the mountaintops.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Bureau
Chief, Pakistan Asia Times Online. He can be
reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing
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KARACHI - The Taliban have
established a foothold in the Pakistani tribal
areas of North and South Waziristan along the
Afghanistan border, but it is not simply a
question of their having marched in and
established their writ. 
