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2 Pakistan's grip on tribal areas is
slipping By Hassan Abbas
The government of President General Pervez
Musharraf faces policy failure in the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan.
Taliban forces and their sympathizers are becoming
entrenched in the region and are aggressively
expanding their influence and operations
(especially in Tank, Dera Ismail Khan and Swat
Valley in North-West Frontier Province - NWFP).
A lethal combination of Musharraf's
political predicament and declining public
support, a significant rise in suicide attacks
targeting the army, and the
reluctance of soldiers in the area to engage
tribal gangs militarily, further exacerbates this
impasse.
Observing this, many militants
associated with local Pakistani jihadi groups have
moved to FATA to help their "brothers in arms" and
benefit from the sanctuary. In the midst of this,
election season is descending on Pakistan, with
Musharraf seeking re-election on Saturday to be
followed by parliamentary polls. This has
consequences for Pakistan's policy in the FATA
region as it will predictably revert to "peace
deals" in the short term, leading to a lowering of
the number of military checkpoints in the area.
If history is any indicator, this will
help Talibanization in the region and provide more
opportunities to the Inter-Services Intelligence
to indirectly support some Taliban commanders
sympathetic to Pakistan's objectives. Overall,
this will likely reduce trouble in downtown
Islamabad, but the Pakistan-Afghanistan border
area will remain on fire.
Poor
coordination between the Pakistani army and the
Western coalition in Afghanistan, President Hamid
Karzai's failure to make Afghanistan a functional
state, and the abundance of drug money in southern
Afghanistan are some of the important variables in
this context. Additionally, Musharraf admits that
the crisis in the area is increasingly turning out
to be a Pashtun insurgency.
However, the
factors that "limit" Pakistan's effective
clampdown on all things Taliban in FATA remain
linked to its fear about increasing Indian
influence in Afghanistan if the Taliban are
comprehensively defeated, and the lack of
Pakistani public support for anything that appears
to be done in pursuance of the US-led global "war
on terror". These perceptions significantly affect
the morale of army commanders and soldiers
operating in the region.
Musharraf has
largely failed to make a strong case to his people
about the need for strong military action against
the Taliban in FATA. He has often called this
policy as being in the "national interest", but
has not convincingly explained how the army alone
defines the national interest. More so, Pakistanis
have seen the military defining such interests too
often in the past with devastating effects for the
state, and interpret Pakistan's current fight
against the Taliban in terms of succumbing to US
demands and interests.
With this backdrop
in view, this analysis outlines what is happening
today in each of the seven tribal agencies in FATA
and what the implications are for Pakistan,
Afghanistan and the United States.
Bajaur Agency Bajaur Agency
overlooks Afghanistan's Kunar province, where US
forces are battling al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
Al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri escaped
the reportedly Central Intelligence Agency-led
attack at Damadola in Bajaur on January 13, 2006,
while one of his close relatives was among the 18
killed.
Damadola is considered a stronghold
of Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi and
Jamaat-e-Islami units, and the
Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam has representation in
parliament from Bajaur. Bajaur during the 1980s
and 1990s was known as the "Poppy Kingdom" and
many Afghan refugee camps (functioning until 2005)
were a source of pro-Taliban recruitment in the
area.
In August, talks between the Taliban
and a tribal jirga (supported by the
Pakistani government) to improve the law and order
situation in Bajaur failed as the Taliban wanted
the government to first release some arrested
militants. Trouble had broken out in the area with
the news of the proposed construction of a US
helipad in Afghanistan's Kunar province as the
tribal leaders sympathetic to the Taliban framed
it as a threat to Pakistan.
The strength
of the Taliban in the area can be gauged from two
recent events: since July this year, they have
successfully enforced Friday as the weekly holiday
instead of Sunday, which is the official weekly
holiday; secondly, Abdul Ghani Marwat, who headed
the government's vaccination campaign in Bajaur,
was killed in a bomb attack in February amid the
Taliban-sponsored rumor that the Pakistani
government-run polio vaccination drive was a US
plot to sterilize Muslim children. The rumor was
so widespread (projected by Taliban fatwas) that, according
to government estimates (which are always
conservative), parents of around 24,000 children
had refused to give them the polio vaccine.
Khyber Agency Khyber Agency
is the main artery connecting Peshawar to Kabul
via the Khyber Pass. Today, many men are seen
wearing traditional caps in the agency because of
fear, as a local religious outfit sympathetic to
the Taliban, Lashkar-i-Islam (Army of Islam), has
declared it binding on all men of the agency to
wear caps. The leader of the group, Mangle Bagh,
in his radio address last week re-affirmed this
edict and announced that violators' heads would be
shaved and they would face a monetary fine.
It is pertinent to point out that there is
a serious battle going on in the agency between
Ansar-ul-Islam - led by Pir Saif ur Rahman - and
Lashkar-i-Islam - led by Gul Maiden and Mufti
Munir Shakir - since 2005-06. Both factions have
built their militias over the past few years and
have entrenched themselves in castle-like
strongholds. In essence, this is an intra-Sunni
(Deobandi vs Barelvi) war.
After banning
music in the tribal areas, the local Taliban in
Khyber Agency have also started fining taxi
drivers and citizens Rs500 (about US$8) for
listening to music cassettes in their cars. Also
recently, militants started distributing pamphlets
in Bara Bazaar in Khyber Agency saying that the
"Taliban have finally reached Bara", while warning
that "if anyone tries to hinder our movement and
activities, we will launch a holy war against
them".
In comparison to other tribal
agencies, Khyber Agency (because of its proximity
to Peshawar, the capital of NWFP) is more
accessible to Pakistani government functionaries
and some development work has been done in the
area. For instance, in 2005, Stephen Hadley, the
then adviser on national security to President
George W Bush, inaugurated a primary school
building project in Surkamar town of Khyber Agency
that was financed by the US and Japanese
governments in collaboration with the FATA
secretariat. Conditions have changed for the worse
since then. The extent of the writ of the state
can be ascertained from the fact that about a
dozen people were killed in June this year when
the Taliban attacked the house of the Khyber
Agency political agent, Syed Ameeruddin Shah.
Kurram Agency Surrounded by
lofty mountains and Afghan territory on three
sides, Kurram Agency is the second largest tribal
region in FATA. Its headquarters is in Parachinar,
about 90 kilometers from Kabul. According to
intelligence estimates, it was also the first
geographical point where fleeing al-Qaeda members
from Afghanistan landed after the September 11,
2001, attacks.
Within Pakistan, the route
to Kurram goes through Kohat district of NWFP
where permits are obtained to travel to Kurram.
Many al-Qaeda militants had moved on to Kohat
because Kurram Agency is widely known as
pro-Northern Alliance because of its significant
Shi'ite population - a factor that has impacted
Taliban objectives in the agency negatively.
Shi'ite-Sunni violence remains the hallmark of
this agency, as pro-Taliban factions believe that
the Shi'ites of the area are active against the
Taliban and al-Qaeda. Various peace jirgas
were instituted to bring peace to the area, but
without much success. In April alone, about 100
people were killed in sectarian clashes.
The government of Pakistan is planning to
construct two small dams in the agency at a cost
of Rs400 million in fiscal year 2007-08 to improve
the agricultural sector and thereby improve
the
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