This post is a reproduction of an article by Shaun Gregory, former British high commissioner to Pakistan.
There is a school of thought which has long argued that the creation of Pakistan in 1947 was a geographical, ethnic, cultural, economic, and political artifice sewn and held together only by the weak thread of a questionable religious homogeneity, and that consequently the project of Pakistan would eventually be torn apart by its own contradictions.
History may well record that the abject surrender of Swat in a phoney ‘peace deal’ marked an important stepping stone on the path to Pakistan’s destruction.
While the weak and hapless Zardari/Gilani government continues to waste precious political capital on PPP infighting and avoidable confrontation with Nawaz Sharif, to the west of the Indus river dynamics are unfolding which have placed Pakistan’s integrity once more in question.
Since 2001, the Pakistan Army and ISI have been playing a dangerous game in providing sanctuary to the Afghan Taliban in the Pashtun areas of Northern Balochistan and in the FATA, in the expectation that Mullah Omar would orchestrate a comeback in Afghanistan, displace the Karzai regime or any of its western-backed successors, force NATO from the region, and reverse India’s growing influence in Afghanistan.
In early 2009, this strategy appears to be working. The Afghan Taliban are influential across all but the most northerly areas of Afghanistan and a peace deal of some sort with Mullah Omar is predicted this year or next.
Pakistan has, however, entered a Faustian pact with Mullah Omar and the Quetta Shura, and the darker implications of that bargain have only now begun to dawn on Pakistan’s ruling elite.
As the Afghan Taliban have regained power and momentum from sanctuaries in Pakistan, they have also created and driven the context for the emergence and evolution of virulent forms of Pakistani militancy and terrorism, both in Pakistan’s Pashtun areas and across Pakistan.
These dynamics have been reinforced by the Pakistan army/ISI’s continued embrace of Punjabi terrorists, and by the military focus of the US-led war on terror which has fuelled radicalisation on both sides of the Durand Line.
In this context tribal armies in the FATA have mutated into new forms of radical extremist groups such as Baitullah Mehsud’s TTP and Fazlullah’s TNSM. Al-Qaida has re-emerged and re-established something of its global reach, foreign fighters from as far as Algeria, European diasporas, western China and the Philippines have once again poured into the region, and the huge expansion of largely Saudi and locally-funded madrassas has ensured a continual supply of young Afghans and Pakistanis ready to die for the militant cause.
The Pakistan army and ISI have presided over this rising tide of terrorism and religious extremism in the expectation that they could achieve their aims in Afghanistan through the Afghan Taliban while keeping control of Pakistani militancy and terrorism on their own side of the border.
In this context tribal armies in the FATA have mutated into new forms of radical extremist groups such as Baitullah Mehsud’s TTP and Fazlullah’s TNSM. Al-Qaida has re-emerged and re-established something of its global reach, foreign fighters from as far as Algeria, European diasporas, western China and the Philippines have once again poured into the region, and the huge expansion of largely Saudi and locally-funded madrassas has ensured a continual supply of young Afghans and Pakistanis ready to die for the militant cause.
The Pakistan army and ISI have presided over this rising tide of terrorism and religious extremism in the expectation that they could achieve their aims in Afghanistan through the Afghan Taliban while keeping control of Pakistani militancy and terrorism on their own side of the border.
In the wake of the bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad in September 2008, and of the escalation of terrorist violence in Pakistan’s cities which preceded it, that calculation has proven disastrously wrong.
Given the perilous situation in which the Pakistani state now finds itself, the question of why the Pakistan army/ISI has still not thrown its lot in with the US and NATO and unleashed the full force of the Army and the ISI against the Afghan Taliban, the tribal militants, and al-Qaida, requires an answer.
Given the perilous situation in which the Pakistani state now finds itself, the question of why the Pakistan army/ISI has still not thrown its lot in with the US and NATO and unleashed the full force of the Army and the ISI against the Afghan Taliban, the tribal militants, and al-Qaida, requires an answer.
Only two arguments make any sense: either the Pakistan Army-ISI is unwilling to do so or it is unable to do so. If the former, then that can only be because the Army-ISI still believes it can contain the militancy and terrorism within Pakistan.
If this is the case, then one wonders why the Army-ISI continues to think that and how many more Marriotts on the push side, and what western incentives on the pull side will it take before the Army and ISI make a decisive break with past policy?
More gravely for Pakistan, for its neighbours, and for the West, the other possibility is that the Pakistan Army and ISI may genuinely have reached the practical limits of their ability to control militancy and terrorism.
More gravely for Pakistan, for its neighbours, and for the West, the other possibility is that the Pakistan Army and ISI may genuinely have reached the practical limits of their ability to control militancy and terrorism.
Pakistan has committed up to 120,000 troops to the FATA region and since September 2008 has not been able to make a substantive impact in Bajaur and Mohmand Agencies.
Mullah Omar and the Quetta Shura is understood, through a decentralised command structure and with the support of al-Qaida, to broadly control the tribal militants in Pakistan, such as the TTP and TNSM, which pose the most direct threat to the state of Pakistan.
Mullah Omar and the Pakistan Army-ISI are, thus, locked in a fearful stalemate: Mullah Omar checks the power of Pakistan’s militants and holds them back from escalating violence against the Pakistani state, and in return the Pakistan Army-ISI continues the support and protection of Mullah Omar and the Quetta Shura and pays lip-service to western demands for tough action against the Afghan Taliban.
Either way, the Pashtun areas of Pakistan are beyond the reach of the Pakistani state and it is difficult to see that they can be recovered.
Either way, the Pashtun areas of Pakistan are beyond the reach of the Pakistani state and it is difficult to see that they can be recovered.
The situation in Swat, thus, stands as an expression of a larger crisis of state legitimacy which for all practical purposes will likely see another piece of Pakistan break away.
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