According to a recent Yahoo news update:
The government (of Pakistan) agreed to impose Islamic law and suspend a military offensive across much of northwest Pakistan on Monday in concessions aimed at pacifying the Taliban insurgency spreading from the border region to the country’s interior.
In my opinion, the devil is really in the details and the implementation of this agreement. I have mixed feeling on this: It is hard to see how the situation in Swat can be controlled only through the military means; there has to be a political dimension. This is what the U.S. is also learning the hard way in Afghanistan where there is already a talk of having some sort of adjustment with “moderate Afghan Taliban”.
In an ideal world, you would have hoped that Pakistan army would have gained the upper hand in Swat and then they could have negotiated from the position of strength. Unfortunately this is not the case. Despite several attempts, the army could not make any significant gains in Swat. Part of this is due to bad strategy and partly due the nature of guerrilla-warfare. Pakistan army was never trained to fight a counter-insurgency; fighting against India is what the focus has been so it does’t come as a surprise that it didn’t perform very well.
As far as their strategy goes, it was based primarily on using gunships and (artillery) shelling against suspected militant hide-outs. This approach is not very conducive to counter-insurgency because it leads to a lot of collateral damage. As the U.S. experience in Iraq shows, your mission in such a situation must really be to “secure the population”. This was the fundamental change in strategy that U.S. Gen. David Petraeus made but such a change requires putting a lot of boots on the ground, taking a lot more causalities and better intelligence. Unfortunately the Pak army was unwilling and incapable to take this approach which resulted in the bloody Swat stalemate.
Against this backdrop, the agreement can offer a way out if government can play its cards correctly. It should also be noted that this is not the first time that Swat will be under the so-called Shari’s law. This was the case for decades when Swat/Dir region was part of the princely state and life was governed by “Customary law”. The elected representatives of the Swat region have also been in favor of incorporating some populist militant demands such as Qazi courts and quick and simply justice with a 6 months deadline to process all cases.
One can hope that by incorporating the populist demands and a willingness to understand and work with local sensitivities, the authorities can gain credibility with the local population and take some of the wind out of the insurgency’s sails. I am under no illusion that the likes of Molana Fazlullah will be willing to give up their weapons and stop fighting but hopefully such a agreement will isolate the hard core extremist elements from the deeply conservative local population and deprive them from one of their main arguments. It is a lot easier to deal with insurgents when they don’t enjoy widespread local support.
Like most poor-developing countries, Pakistan has never exercised effective control over its national territory. This state of affairs can seem harmless enough during periods of regional peace, but quickly becomes a nation’s achilles heel when regional instability erupts. In unstable periods, power vacuums are exposed and filled by larger powers or by local militarized groups — witness the former role of the PLO or the Israeli proxy South Lebanese Army in Lebanon and now Hezbollah or the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia preceded by the Khmer Rouge genocide; the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) eastern stretch is actually identical with groups from neighboring Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda displacing the state. Pakistan, very unfortunately, is going the way of Lebanon, Cambodia, and the DRC — its internal weaknesses have been exposed, exploited, and now confirmed. The reordering of the regional map has begun and Pakistan will shrink to core regions of Punjab and Sindh. Effective government control over Baluchistan has already disappeared except for pockets such as Quetta, Gwadar, and the Sui Gas Fields. In NWFP, as well, most of the region is not safe for Pakistani functionaries, military personnel, or citizens from other regions.
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Even if we dont like taliban, we should support this deal because it will save lifes of our people in swat. Sharia law is the best law that has Umar Farook proven, we should learn more about him and how he was as Calif istend of learning and trying to be like west so they will like us. We are muslims and should live as muslims not as slaves of west/USA as we are forced to live know. They will never be our friend, they have fooled us before and they will fool us again.
I belive every area can have there own law as people in that area want, example Islamabadh, Lahore and Karachi can have western based law while we from other areas can have sharia-law or what ever our local-people want. End province system, there are too many people in a province to handle, or the province is to big in squaremetre.
Its a great move.
Now we will get to see real entertainment coming live out of Sawat. I can not wait to see live broadcast of folks getting flogged, beheaded and amputated out in the open. I sense this will become major source of revenue for the Malaknd division in a very short time.
It is a BAD BAD move.
But lets be honest. This is the decision taken by Paktunkhah Govt. and Fedral Govt. only approved what is essential a provincial problem.
I think ANP had to bite the bitter pill agreeing to this. They held out as long as they could, hoping the security forces will be able to overcome them.
As for security forces, the thing that really hampered them was, they had no means to differentiate between the friends and foes. They had no intelligence on who and where these guys are. In order to break the insurgency you have to destroy the command and control and supply network of the insurgents. As we all know these guys were very well funded, trained and equipped, when our Govt. was begging the West for modern equipment.
So to be realistic, as a Pakistani, I have to swallow a bitter pill as well. Our own ignorance and carelessness created this monster.
But as a nation this is a time to learn from mistakes, we need to identify the political failures, that provided space for these guys. We need to be vigilant to protect the basic human rights.
Our intelligence will have plug spies in their network in order to better understand these people.
Most of all, complete DISARMAMENT of the entire province as well as FATA is a must. If we compromise on this, it will only be a matter of time before they take over Kafirabad, Kafirhore and Kafirachi.
My worthless two paisas.