The NWFP government has released the banned outfit Tehreek e Nafaz e Shariat e Mohammadi (TNSM) incarcerated leader Maulana Sufi Mohammad on Monday, in a new bid to reclaim some of its lost territory in the restive Swat district and tribal areas.
ANP led coalition government of the province has been adamant that they would solve Taliban insurgency through dialogue and both the parties have hinted on many occasions that they are engaged in dialogue and talks are heading in right direction.
Deals with militants are not new and in the past provincial and federal governments also tried to broker peace with militant through dialogue.
The Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA) led government of the Frontier in May 2007 signed a peace deal with Maulana Fazlullah, son-in-law of Sufi Mohammad and leader of Swat insurgency, which collapsed after the operation against Red Mosque in Islamabad and government, had to launch a military operation in the district in October last year to regain control, which is still going on.
Sufi Mohammad release has brought to the limelight the government attempts to bring the peace back to the province ravaged by the militancy, through negotiation and it also intends to replicate this model to tribal areas and engage the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a conglomerate of militants’ outfits fighting the security forces in the country.
However, in the past three deals had been signed with the Taliban militants in the North and South Waziristan, but all collapsed.
Sufi’s release came after a jirga of TNSM met the provincial government officials and Sufi agreed to follow a six point agenda for peace in Malakand Agency.
An active member of Jamaat Islami (JI), he established TNSM in 1992 after he quit (JI), and he gained such clout that his followers tried to enforce Sharia in the Malakand Agency in 1994 and several people were killed in clashes with security forces. Among other things, his version of sharia also included driving on the right hand side and his followers disrupted the regular flow of traffic all through the area by forcing people to drive in wrong lanes.
In 2001, during the American invasion of Afghanistan, he took around 10, 000 people to fight American forces in Afghanistan, but most of them were either killed or captured by the Northern Alliance.
He was arrested along with a dozen supporters in October 2001, on his return to Pakistan, after his disastrous Afghan campaign and later convicted for seven years in prison in 2002.
Since then, he was languishing in Dera Ismail Khan Jail and was shifted to Peshawar last autumn and lodged in the Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) in tight security. ANP led coalition government, which came to power after February 18 elections, started negotiations with TNSM and released him on Monday, but at present it is not clear, that could he be useful in normalising the situation.
It is also a question that he would be able to influence his son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah, the leader of Swat militancy, popularly known as ‘Radio Mullah.’
Author is a Staff Reporter for Daily Times, Peshawar Bureau.
what this but-they-are-our-pakistani-brothers argument leaves out is that they chose to take up arms against the government. for us to negotiate with them sets up a horrible precedent for any person who wants to impose their ideas on a nation of over 160 million people.
@Shayan: according to your theory, there should be a brutal and bloodiest crack down agaisnt MQM as well which has always challenged writ of the government? but then you would not support it because MQM belongs to left wing secularist cult of Pakistan. yeah right!
A fake and temporary peace gained through appeasement of militants. These agreements will fail just like the peace agreements in Lal Masjid, Swat and Waziristan. The militants are merciless animals, they will not change their ways.
Daily Times and its editors have been taking a pro-army line in Pakistan for sometime. On reading Daily Times editorials and other content carefully, one can see a clear attempt to undermine the civilian govt and find wedge issues to emphasis the problems between the PPP/PMLn alliance.
Yes, they have problems but the need is to keep this alliance together and not sabotage it. The alternative is Mush or the army.
Pakistan needs to maintain excellent relations with the US but not at the cost of a civil war in Pakistan or in some parts of Pakistan.
Pakistan in general is between a rock and a hard place. Since 2001 the Pak army is trying to solve this issue. By now we all know that they failed to achieve anything. The Tribal area is sliding under quickly and if no corrective measures are taken, we might see the US army or the NATO armies either entering the area or bombing the hell out there. We know via media that Mush and by that token, since he was the COAS then, the army pretty much allowed the US to bomb the area whenever the US felt necessary. We also know that unfortunately, we cannot even prosecute Mush and the army for this act of treason.
Now we need to look at what choices the civilian govt has. It is under enormous US and the Pak army pressure to maintain Musharaf and the Pak army policy of Carte Blanche to the US to do what it pleases in the area. If the civilians follow that policy, and the US continues to bomb that area, the Pakistan public would lynch them. While the army and Mush know that they can easily “manage” the public opinion by unleashing the state power on the public. The civvies don’t have this option. If the US starts bombing again the civilian government will have no choice but to either resign or fight back. In view of our past experience with the Pak army and Mush, we know that they will refuse to fight the US and instead roll out another emergency and remove the civilians from power.
So the the only real option for the civilians is to somehow manage to bring these rebel in line for as long as they can. The civilians need time to get a grasp of the situation and find alternate ways but they can’t do it, if they are being fired upon from every side.
The negotiations with these rebels wont hurt right now but if there are no negotiations and the fight goes on, the likelihood of the US interference increases manifold.
Possibly, these guys will go back to what the do best and start another jihad but with tons of money and accommodation here and there, many can be bought off for maintaining the peace. So at this time this policy is the only reasonable policy.
By the way, for the sanguine types you might like to know that Jim Sinclair’s been saying for aewhile the US will attack Pakistan…
jsmineset.com
Jim Sinclair