Pakistan: A Hard Country (80 page)
Despite social change in recent decades, Swat remains to a considerable extent a tribal society in which the Yusufzai Pathans dominate. As elsewhere in the Pathan lands, religious figures have wielded great authority. The Akhund of Swat (1794 – 1877) in the mid-nineteenth century was fol owed by the remarkable religious dynasty of the Mianguls, who for the first time created stable monarchical rule over the Swat val ey. The British accepted and backed the Mianguls as rulers, partly because they were effective in crushing or expel ing Islamist extremists (the ‘Hindustan fanatics’ or ‘Mujahidin’) who wished to use Swat as a base to carry out jihad against the British. Pakistan inherited the British protectorate, but in 1969 (twenty years after India had abolished its princely states), princely rule was ended and Swat was incorporated into Pakistan.
The law the princes exercised was based on a mixture of local tribal custom and the Shariah cal ed rivaj, but – especial y under the last prince (or Wali), Jehanzeb – they also created an autocratic but enlightened government which did a great deal to bring education and economic development to Swat. The smal size of the population meant that the Walis could hand out judicial and administrative decisions directly to much of the population.
Justice was be Dalila, be Wakila au be Apela (without argument, without advocate, and without appeal) but was quick, cheap, transparent, general y fair, and above al in accordance with the local people’s own conceptions of justice. In a tel ing comment, Behrouz Khan, a native of Swat and correspondent for Geo TV in Peshawar, described the last Wali as ‘basical y a kind of aristocratic Mangal Bagh’ (in a reference to the Islamist warlord mentioned in the last chapter) – dealing out autocratic, ruthless but popular justice leavened with humour.9
It is a very depressing comment on the quality of the Pakistani governmental, political and legal systems that every single person with whom I spoke in Swat – every single one, including Pakistani officials and officers – said that Swat had been better run under the last Wali, and that, in particular, the administration of justice had been far superior. As an army major (not a Swati) told me: The merger of 1969 had a very bad effect on Swat. The Wali ruled with justice and fair play. He guaranteed al the amenities of life for the people. But from 1969 to the present, every Pakistani government has failed to administer justice and meet the needs and the aspirations of the people. So older people in Swat used to tel their sons and daughters how much better things had been before.
This deep public respect for the Wali’s memory led the Taleban to spare the homes of the old royal family in Saidu Sharif, despite their hatred for the landowning class in general. A certain Pathan nationalist element was also present in the nostalgia for independent Swat. It had been a Pathan state under Pathan princes, using the Pashto language for administration and justice; whereas in the NWFP as in the rest of Pakistan, the local language had been eclipsed in government, higher education and social status by either English or Urdu.
A historian of Swat, Sultani-Rome, writes that while under the old system the Wali and officials took direct responsibility for government, under the Pakistani system no one did. Merger led to ruthless exploitation of forests and plunder of natural resources and a huge increase in corruption. This amounted to ‘a sort of colonization of Swat by which it lost its separate identity, which had stood for centuries, if not mil ennia’.10
This history is of immense importance in explaining what happened in Swat, and why the militants’ temporary seizure of power in Swat is not necessarily a forerunner of similar developments elsewhere.
Maulana Fazlul ah, who in 2007 placed his movement under the aegis of the Pakistani Taleban, seems to have dreamed of recreating the princely state as an independent Islamic emirate like Afghanistan under the Taleban, with himself as Emir.
The memory of Swat state left the population with a deep sense not only of the corruption and injustice but of the basic il egitimacy of the Pakistani judicial system. In consequence, within a couple of years of the merger with Pakistan, local figures were already cal ing for the adoption of the Shariah instead of Pakistani state law. These included men such as Dani Gul, who had led the democratic opposition to the Wali’s autocracy, but soon became bitterly disil usioned with Pakistan.
These feelings were increased by the twists and turns in Swat’s constitutional position within Pakistan, and especial y its judicial system. From 1969 until 1974, Swat had no constitutional y recognized judicial code at al . In 1974, Swat and the other former Pathan princely states were named Provincial y Administered Tribal Areas, or PATA.
They came under the NWFP, but had a different legal system, including a stronger role for jirgas. Then in 1994, the Pakistani Supreme Court declared this arrangement unconstitutional and decreed the ful incorporation of these territories into the Pakistani judicial order.
In response, in 1995, a local Islamist group, the Tehriq-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammedi (TNSM) or Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law, launched mass protests in Swat and other areas of the Malakand Division in support of their demand for Shariah law. The protests blocked roads and government offices were seized. Several dozen people were kil ed, mostly in the resulting state crackdown.
However, the national government of Benazir Bhutto backed down and agreed to a limited role for the Shariah in the administration of justice in the Malakand. The Nizam-e-Adl agreement of 2009 was therefore not nearly as new or as radical as most people assumed.
The TNSM’s founder, Maulana Sufi Muhammad, was a former local Jamaat Islami leader who had split from the party in 1992 in disgust at its opposition to armed revolution. Sufi Muhammad was arrested in 1994 but later released when he ordered his fol owers to cal off their protests, and (doubtless with official encouragement) in the course of the 1990s became a prominent local mobilizer of support for the Afghan Taleban.
The TNSM also had close links with the Pakistani militant groups in Kashmir, where one of Sufi Muhammad’s chief lieutenants, Ibn-eAmin, fought with Jaish-e-Mohammed in the 1990s. He and other TNSM commanders had previously fought with the Mujahidin in Afghanistan in the 1980s – and one reason, I was told, why agitation for Shariah law had not happened much earlier was that so many local militants were away in Afghanistan.
The role of TNSM leaders in these conflicts involved close links to the ISI; and while I do not believe that the ISI promoted the TNSM in Swat for nefarious reasons of its own, there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence to suggest that they intervened on occasions in 2007 – 8 to save particular TNSM leaders (presumably old al ies) from being arrested by the army or police. Less clear is whether these links played any part in discouraging the army from taking tougher action.
In 2001, when the US invaded Afghanistan, Sufi Muhammad inspired thousands of his fol owers and new volunteers to fight there, and a very large number perished. In November 2001, at US
insistence, the Musharraf administration imprisoned him again, and in February 2002 the TNSM was banned, together with other Islamist organizations.
However, the ban was not strictly enforced, and Maulana Fazlul ah, Sufi Muhammad’s son-in-law, took over as the TNSM’s leader. He forged links with the emerging revolt in FATA, and gradual y strengthened and armed the movement in Swat. Fazlul ah and the TNSM made effective use of the Kashmir earthquake in 2005, partly by effective relief work, but also by portraying it as God’s punishment for Pathan sins. He spread the TNSM’s message partly though effective broadcasts on his local secret radio station, which gained him the nickname ‘Mul ah FM’.
The expansion of TNSM power was made possible in part by the presence of the MMA Islamist government in Peshawar, which strongly discouraged tough action against them, and in particular by the MMAAPPOINTED Commissioner of the Malakand division, Syed Muhammad Javed, who is widely accused of having been a Taleban sympathizer. He was arrested in May 2009 for abetting the rebel ion (though some officials have told me that he had been made an innocent scapegoat and that he was simply implementing government policy), and was released again in October 2009.
In July 2007, infuriated by the government’s attack on the Red Mosque in Islamabad, Fazlul ah led the TNSM in open revolt, gained control of much of Swat and instituted Shariah courts under TNSM
control. He had first declared war on the government in Swat in January 2006, when his brother, who was fighting with the Taleban on the Frontier, was kil ed in the US drone attack on a suspected Al Qaeda headquarters at Damadola in Bajaur. Fazlul ah blamed the Pakistan government for helping the US, and vowed to take revenge.
Initial y, as elsewhere, the TNSM/Taleban won much local popularity by eliminating local drug-dealers, kidnappers and other criminals whom the Pakistani police had been unwil ing or unable to deal with.
However, the Taleban then began attacks on local officials, policemen, military personnel and politicians. Their campaign of attacks on girls’
schools – which they declared unIslamic – was so ferocious that even a spokesman for the Tehriq-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP) begged them to desist. After the formation of the TTP, Fazlul ah announced the adherence of the TNSM to the Taleban, while retaining ful local autonomy.
In November 2007, the Pakistani army launched a major counter-offensive, which captured and destroyed Fazlul ah’s headquarters and drove him and his men into the hil s, from where they continued terrorist attacks. However, fol owing the election of the ANP in February 2008, the new ANP government of the NWFP insisted on ending the operation and beginning negotiations with the Taleban. Sufi Muhammad was released from jail after renouncing violence and promising to mediate in negotiations. He did indeed manage to negotiate a ceasefire in May 2008, but the result was that Fazlul ah and his fol owers returned to the Swat val ey in force and took a savage revenge on local people who had supported the military actions against them. The local population not surprisingly became convinced that neither the politicians nor the army was serious about fighting the Taleban, and would not protect local people who opposed them. In the words of Major Tahir of the army staff, ‘people decided that the Taleban were here to stay and they had better get along with them’.
The result was increasing TNSM/Taleban control of Swat. Clashes with the military resumed in the summer and continued for the next six months, with hundreds kil ed and hundreds of thousands fleeing to the plains. Among the dead were a number of local leaders of the ANP
and PPP, and many other local politicians and their families were driven out of Swat. In al , 238 schools were destroyed (mainly those for girls but including some for boys) out of 1,540 in Swat, and others were occupied and turned into militant bases.
The TNSM/Taleban forces which created this mayhem do not seem to have been especial y wel armed, at least to judge by the captured weapons which the army showed me in Mingora. As one would expect, their most dangerous asset by far was the Improvised Explosive Device (IED), several of which were on display, in some cases with remotecontrol mechanism. There were several dozen AK-47s and a few rocket-propel ed grenades. However, there were also a large number of old bolt-action rifles, shotguns and pistols, some of them dating back to the Victorian era. In Swat at least it does not seem to have been TNSM/ Taleban weaponry that brought them their successes, but their ability to melt into the population, strike at unguarded or lightly guarded targets, terrify the police into inactivity, and run rings round the army.
This violent stand-off with the army in Swat continued until the negotiation of the Nizam-e-Adl agreement in February 2009, by which Shariah law became the only legal code in the Malakand Division. This agreement was welcomed by the great majority of ordinary Pakistanis with whom I have spoken, and the overwhelming majority of Swatis. In the case of the Swatis, this was not only because they wanted peace between the Taleban and the army, but also because they actively prefer the Shariah to the Pakistani legal system. Indeed, as of early 2010 the Nizam-e-Adl is stil in force in Swat, and most people wish for it to remain so.
Interestingly, however, Fazlul ah and the local TNSM/Taleban seem to have interpreted this agreement in exactly the same way as the West and the Pakistani liberal media – namely, as a sign that the Pakistani state and army were on the run and could be driven from one district after another. The resulting hubris led to their move into neighbouring Buner, which triggered their nemesis – the massive counter-offensive of the army against them.
By mid-summer of 2009, the military had driven the TNSM/Taleban from the Swat val ey, captured hundreds of their activists, and – according to military figures – kil ed some 1,200 of them. However, the cost to the civilian population had been high. Though the military seems to have done its best to keep civilian deaths to a minimum, and damage in the city of Mingora itself was slight, vil ages where the TNSM/Taleban made a stand were heavily bombarded. Estimates of civilian casualties range from several dozen to several hundred, and more than 1.5 mil ion people – amajority of the district’s population – fled from the fighting. By the end of the year almost al had returned – only to be displaced again the fol owing August by the floods which swept down the Swat val ey from the deforested mountains, destroying much of the region’s remaining infrastructure.
