Taliban find fertile new ground in
Pakistan By Imtiaz Ali
The challenge of militancy in Pakistan's
tribal region is no longer confined to the North
and South Waziristan regions along the Afghan
border. After establishing their strongholds in
Waziristan, militants have recently made deeper
inroads in the erstwhile peaceful Mohmand tribal
Agency in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal
Areas (FATA) region.
Pro-Taliban
militants, also known as the Pakistani Taliban,
seem to have made a spectacular surge in the
Mohmand Agency, where they have tried to force
people to pledge to obey Islamic law. Under the
Taliban, barbers are threatened not to shave
beards, music is banned and women are barred from
receiving an
education. Worse, like their
mentors in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, these
fundamentalist militants have also taken the law
into their own hands by providing speedy and
severe justice in the name of cleansing society of
social evils.
More importantly, militants
have recently geared up a guerrilla-style war
against Pakistani security forces by adopting
hit-and-run tactics. Ambushes, remote-controlled
bomb explosions and long-range rocket attacks on
military checkpoints and government installations
have become a routine matter. Recent developments
clearly indicate that the Mohmand Agency is fast
becoming another front in the country's fight
against terrorism. If not effectively and
immediately tamed, there is a growing fear that
Mohmand Agency could pose even more serious and
dangerous challenges to the embattled Pakistani
forces than Waziristan.
On January 14 a
convoy of the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) on
its way to regional military headquarters at
Ghalanai - came under attack from local militants
near Qandharo. Seven soldiers were killed by
gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades, as well as
at least six Taliban insurgents, including local
commander Faqir Hussain. The ambush came days
after the launch of a major FC offensive on
January 10. An estimated 100,000 people were
driven from their homes in Mohmand Agency by
government artillery fire.
Mohmand Agency
derives its name from the Mohmand tribe that
inhabits this rugged mountainous region with its
barren slopes along the Afghan border. It is one
of the seven tribal agencies that form FATA; the
other six are Khyber, Bajaur, Orakzai, Kurram,
South Waziristan and North Waziristan.
Mohmand Agency was part of Khyber Agency
until 1951 when it was given separate status in
FATA; it shares borders with Afghanistan to the
west, Khyber Agency to the south, Bajaur Agency to
the north, and the Malakand, Charsadda and
Peshawar districts of the Northwest Frontier
Province (NWFP) to the east. For administrative
purposes the agency is divided into Upper and
Lower Mohmand. The latter area is rather fertile,
whereas the Upper Mohmand region is comparatively
less productive. The entire region has few
resources and little infrastructure.
Surge of militancy Mohmand
Agency has long been known as the calmest and most
moderate region in FATA. Over the past few years
it has successfully managed to avoid political
violence and "Talibanization". Locals admit that
the area has been notorious as a den for criminal
outsiders and car thieves because of the absence
of police and other law enforcement agencies, but
the sudden appearance of gun-brandishing militants
on the streets was a rare phenomenon. Unlike other
conservative areas of the tribal belt and FATA,
women in Mohmand tribes would even work in the
fields with the men. All in all, Mohmand remained
a peaceful part of the troubled tribal areas until
last year.
Despite the relative peace that
had prevailed until recently, a blend of religious
conservatism, a history of struggle against
British imperialism and a deep-rooted
anti-Americanism makes the area ripe for jihadi
recruitment. Banned militant organizations have
been actively working in Mohmand and the nearby
Charsadda district town of Shabqadar. Two young
suicide bombers, Bahar Ali and Aminullah, both
hailing from Shabqadar, attacked US and Canadian
NATO forces in Afghanistan in 2006.
The
phenomenon has gained currency lately; a young man
estimated to be 12-13 years old killed only
himself in a futile attack on a FC post at Kapakh
Kandao in Mohmand Agency on January 15. Two days
later a teenage suicide bomber killed 12 in a
blast at a Shiite mosque in Peshawar.
The
current wave of militancy in Mohmand Agency is
closely linked to the bigger problem of the entire
tribal belt, where a tide of Islamic militancy is
spreading across and beyond its boundaries,
despite the presence of more than 70,000 Pakistani
troops and unlikely official claims of progress of
flushing out militants from the region. Like other
parts of the tribal belt, Mohmand Agency was an
inaccessible area for Pakistani troops until June
2003, when Islamabad deployed its soldiers there
for the first time to halt the incursion of
al-Qaeda fighters from across the border.
Many analysts believe that Waziristan has
been the heart of Islamist militancy since
September 11. However, in order to enlarge their
operation zones and escape the military operations
of the Pakistan Army in turbulent South
Waziristan, local militants and foreign fighters
allied with al-Qaeda first took refuge in the
rugged Shawal mountains of neighboring North
Waziristan. This soon also became another
battleground. As a result the main towns of North
Waziristan - Miran Shah and Mir Ali - and the
surrounding areas witnessed large clashes between
Pakistani security forces and militants. Despite
this, the militants finally succeeded in
establishing a mini-Taliban state in North
Waziristan.
The self-styled Taliban
operation against bandits in Miran Shah in late
2006 encouraged them to expand their activities in
the lawless tribal belt. Mohmand Agency was the
next base for local Taliban: a porous frontier
with Afghanistan apparently being the main
attraction for the militants. The growing
influence of the local Taliban was first felt
early last year when a group of local militant
groups calling themselves Taliban started policing
and forcing people in Mohmand to adopt a strict
version of sharia. Government silence has
exacerbated the situation in the Mohmand region.
Local journalists say that the government had
ample warning against the looming danger of
militancy in the wake of Taliban activities in
Waziristan and neighboring Bajaur Agency. All of
these fell on deaf ears and the local tribesmen
were left with no option but to enter into a
so-called peace deal with militants.
Though tribal elders justified the peace
deals as an attempt to prevent the Taliban's
interference in their local customs and
traditions, the fact remains that such "deals"
proved poisonous and provided further chances for
militancy to fester in Mohmand Agency. The tribal
elders suffered the brunt of the growing influence
of Taliban militants, who threatened the elders
with death if they continued to cooperate with
Islamabad. Militants targeted a jirga of local
elders with a bombing in June last year. A note
was found at the site of the explosion, warning
the tribesmen against supporting the government or
holding jirgas against militants. The note,
addressed to the tribal elders, read: "You people
are infidels and hypocrites. If you don't stop
negotiations with the government and meetings
against the Taliban, then explosion[s] will occur
in your homes."
In late July 2007, at the
end of the bloody Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) military
operation in the capital of Islamabad, more than
200 militants in Mohmand Agency seized the
occasion by storming the shrine of famous
anti-British freedom fighter Haji Sahib Turangzai
and taking over the adjacent mosque in the Ghazi
Abad village, some 42 kilometers north of
Ghalanai, Mohmand Agency headquarters.
The
militants re-named the mosque Lal Masjid in a show
of solidarity, noting that Ghazi Abad was the
place Haji Sahib had started his anti-colonial
jihad. The group, identified as local Taliban, was
led by one Umar Khalid, a previously unknown
figure who suddenly grabbed the attention of local
as well as international media when he declared:
"We want to take forward the missions of Haji
Turangzai and the Red Mosque's slain
khateeb (preacher), Ghazi Abdul Rashid."
Leadership and objectives So
far, Umar Khalid continues to be the dominant
Taliban leader in Mohmand Agency. There are no
other prominent names in the rank and file of the
militants operating in the area. Umar Khalid, in
his early thirties, is a local tribesman of
Qandharo town; he also belongs to the Qandharo
sub-tribe of the Safi, a Mohmand Agency tribe
closely related to the Mohmand tribe. Khalid
received his early education in his ancestral
village and then could not continue further
studies.
In his early youth he became
connected with the banned militant organization
Harakat-ul-Mujahideen, where he underwent military
training and also participated in the Kashmir
insurgency. Khalid is said to have stronger
connections with Kashmiri jihadi groups than with
the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan. However, as
a veteran of the Kashmir jihad, he went to
Afghanistan after September 11 to fight alongside
the Taliban and hundreds of other fellow tribesmen
against the US invasion. Locals say that he was
waiting for the right time to strike back and the
Red Mosque operation gave him the chance to rise
to prominence.
Like most of the militant
commanders operating in the tribal region of
Pakistan, Khalid is media-friendly, with a
spokesman, Abu Nauman Asakar, to release his
statements and contact the media regarding
developments taking place in Mohmand Agency.
Surprisingly, he is always happy to be
photographed or filmed - something most of the
militant commanders operating in the tribal region
avoid in the fashion of reclusive Taliban supreme
leader, Mullah Omar. Khalid has made his objective
very clear: implementation of sharia in
Pakistan, no matter the cost.
Khalid is
representing his agency in the newly formed
Tehrek-e-Taliban-Pakistan (Taliban Movement of
Pakistan), headed by Baitullah Mehsud, the most
dangerous militant commander in South Waziristan.
He claims to have more than 3,000 fighters with
him. Local journalists say that most of his
fighters are either young men from the area or
outsiders from other parts of the country, mostly
belonging to banned militant organizations
operating in Kashmir.
Conclusion On the surface, the
rising militancy in Mohmand Agency may not yet be
as big a crisis as in Waziristan, but Mohmand
Agency is also not as remote as Waziristan;
Peshawar is only 30 minutes from the border and
reports are beginning to emerge of insurgent
activity extending toward the NWFP capital.
In an alarming development earlier this
month, five missiles struck the army barracks at
Warsak, a suburb of Peshawar. Officials determined
that the rockets were fired from the Michni area
of Mohmand Agency.
There are few signs
that decision-makers in Islamabad understand how
dire the situation has become. The steady march of
pro-Taliban militants in Mohmand Agency could
easily spill over into the heart of the NWFP. For
this reason there are growing concerns that
Taliban activities in Mohmand Agency might only be
the early symptoms of yet another serious threat
to the internal security of Pakistan.
Imtiaz Ali is a Pakistan-based
journalist working as a special correspondent for
the Washington Post.
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