Taliban: The battle for Pakistan

The United States intervened to free Afghanistan from the Taliban. It may end up handing Taliban a nuclear-armed Pakistan. In the battle for Pakistan, though the Pakistan Army seems to have joined the battle now, the Taliban have reached 60 kilometres from the capital, Islamabad. Yet until just a few days ago the impression was that Pakistan's newly-elected democratic government has been constantly ceding ground. First FATA, then Swat, now the nearby towns and the adjoining Buner district. Even now many objective observers both within Pakistan and outside have very serious doubts if the Army has really killed the 700-odd Taliban it claims to have. Journalists in press conferences in Islamabad have asked to be shown the bodies. They have been promised photos. Yet, the question persists: Will the march of Taliban stop there? By no means, it would appear. With great candour, born of their tremendous self-confidence, the Taliban have already announced their real intentions. They want to rule Pakistan and establish their so-called Sharia in the entire country.

 

They know that a compromised Pakistan Army, with nearly 40 per cent of its cadre Talibanised, and not prepared to listen to the democratic government's dictates, does not have the wherewithal to stop their march. Taliban's retreat from Buner under intense U.S. pressure on Islamabad is only a tactical ploy to be undone at a more convenient time. It is clear that if at all the Pakistan Army is fighting, it is doing so under US pressure so as not to jeopardise the massive injunction of American funds into the Pakistan economy and its own coffers.

 

Will the populace of Pakistan take up the cudgels on behalf of the country and stop the march of Taliban? They recently forced their government to restore the rule of law by reinstating the chief justice of the Supreme Court deposed by the military ruler Pervez Musharraf. But judging by their tepid response to the Taliban's recent call for the imposition of Talibani Sharia law on the whole of Pakistan, the same resolve doesn't seem likely. The lawyer's movement for the restoration of the rule of law, the myriad civil society organisations, the intellectuals, none of them can be seen anywhere, except on the pages of some newspapers and in the TV studios. It seems they are all resigned to migrating from the country or living under the Talibani Sharia rule.

 

No wonder the U.S. and the international community, particularly Pakistan's neighbouring countries, are worried. Alarmed by the rapid advance of heavily armed and un-uniformed Taliban towards Islamabad, a stunned Obama administration said on April 22 that Pakistan posed a 'mortal threat' to the United States and world. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned in 'unusually bleak terms' that Pakistan's fragile government is facing an 'existential threat' from Islamic militants who are now operating within a few hours of the capital. She told a House committee that the government in Islamabad is ceding territory and 'basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists' in signing a deal that limits the government's involvement in the war-torn Swat Valley.

Pakistan's ruling and opposition leaders too have been sounding their warning even before Clinton made her remarks. Maulana Fazlur Rehman, chief of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl, a religious party within the ruling coalition, told parliament the same day that the Taliban was heading towards Islamabad. 'You talk about Swat and Buner, but according to my information they have reached much closer,' he said. 'And if they continue advancing, there will soon be only Margalla Hills between them and Islamabad.'  Margalla Hills is the dividing line between Islamabad and the North-West Frontier Province.

 

Also on same day, the main opposition party, which had initially supported the Swat deal, openly criticised the agreement. 'The last few days show that gun-carrying Taliban are spreading to more areas and eventually want to capture the whole of Pakistan,' said Khawaja Asif, a leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (N). According to Los Angeles Times, U.S. officials are concerned about other developments too, including a recent decision by the Pakistani Supreme Court to release Maulana Abdul Aziz Ghazi, an anti-American cleric of Islamabad's central mosque Lal Masjid, who is accused of ties to terrorists and has sought to impose Talibani law in the Islamabad region.

 

Secular cowardice is not a new phenomenon in Pakistan. The founder and maker of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, had said on August 11, 1947, in the constituent assembly of Pakistan in Karachi: 'You may belong to any religion or caste or creed �" that has nothing to do with the business of the state.' But as Pakistan's renowned columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee recalls:

 

'Deliverance into the hands of the theocrats came a mere six months after the death of Jinnah, the delivery made by the man who had succeeded him as the leader of his nation. The Objectives Resolution was adopted on March 12, 1949 by the constituent assembly of Pakistan, proposed by the Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan. It clearly and unambiguously declared that religion had much to do with the business of the state. There could be no recovery, as history has proven over the past 60 years.'

 

No one should forget the swiftness with which the Afghan Taliban rose in the 1990s to capture Kandahar and Kabul in one fell swoop. Surely the Taliban are not going to stop at Islamabad. Conquering Pakistan is only the first step in their Long War aims. While Israel and America are going to be their main long-term targets, the first country to bear the brunt will be India. Already there are reports of over a hundred Taliban fighters having infiltrated into the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. This also speaks of collusion between the Taliban and elements in the Pakistan Army. And this is what makes the American strategy for containing Taliban flawed. For they want to use the same Pakistan Army to fight the Taliban. If he could have relied on the army, former president and army chief General Musharraf would have succeeded, at least to some extent, in turning the country around in the direction of what he called 'enlightened moderation.'

 

General Musharraf believed from his early days that Pakistan needed a Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, as indeed it does. With his early education in Turkey, he idolised the father of modern Turkey and wanted to be the one for his country. As he took power on 12 October 1999, he posited himself as a modern leader in the mould of Ataturk, not afraid of showcasing his progressive views. Among the first reforms he tried to effect was a minor procedural change in the implementation of Pakistan's dreaded blasphemy laws that have been used time and again to harass religious and sectarian minorities. Musharraf's modified procedure would have required the local district magistrate's approval for registration of a blasphemy case. It would have been a modest improvement. But 25 days later, on May 16, 2000, Musharraf had to climb down:

 

 'As it was the unanimous demand of the ulema, mashaikh (religious scholars, priests) and the people, therefore, I have decided to do away with the procedural change in the registration of FIR under the Blasphemy Law'.

 

Musharraf's other climb downs were even more craven. His retreat over reforming the extremely cruel and irrational Hudood Ordinance is a case in point. These laws were enacted into law in 1979. The then military dictator General Zia-ul Haq conceived them as part of a more comprehensive process for converting Pakistan into a theocracy governed by Sharia laws, the same that the Taliban want to impose today over the whole of Pakistan. These laws prescribe death by stoning for married Muslims who are found guilty of extramarital sex (for unmarried couples or non-Muslims, the penalty is 100 lashes). The law is very precise in stating how the death penalty is to be administered: 'Such of the witnesses who deposed against the convict as may be available shall start stoning him and, while stoning is being carried on, he may be shot dead, whereupon stoning and shooting shall be stopped.'

 

Musharraf proposed amending the Hudood Ordinance. He sent a draft for parliamentary discussion in early September, 2006. As expected, it outraged the fundamentalists of the MMA, the main Islamic parliamentary opposition. MMA members tore up copies of the proposed amendments on the floor of the National Assembly and threatened to resign en masse. And that was the end of Musharraf's effort at liberalising these laws. He withdrew the amendment.

 

Surely with his army firmly behind him Musharraf could have been more firm. Kemal Ataturk was able to secularise his country as his army was completely secular and totally behind him. Until today the Turkish Army is the bulwark of secularism and prepared to guard the founding principles of the republic at all costs. But depending on the Pakistan Army to fight the Taliban onslaught will be the height of folly.

 

President Barack Obama has summoned the presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan to Washington in early May. It remains to be seen what new strategy the trio comes up with for halting the inevitable march of Taliban to Islamabad and beyond. America under Reagan seems to have radicalised, financed, armed and trained the Af-Pak Pashtuns with the help of General Zia's army and Pakistani mullahs too well for later administrations in these countries to be able to reverse the process now. That was the story of the so-called mujahideen who forced the Soviet Union to withdraw from Afghanistan and some of them are still part of the Kabul administration. The present menace, the black-turbaned fanatics, was created by Pakistan President Asif Zardari's wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and the U.S. administration. The aim was for the U.S. to dominate Afghanistan so that America's gas pipeline from Central Asia via Afghanistan to Karachi's warm water port could be secured and Islamabad could gain what it thought would be 'strategic depth' in the event of an Indian invasion.

 

Now the U.S. and Pakistan-Afghanistan need a radically different strategy to cope with the Frankenstein's monster they have created. Of this there is no evidence so far. But there better be one if the civilised world has to be saved. The good thing is that at least Washington now recognises this as an 'existential threat' and is willing to say so. It would be a bonus for civilisation if governments were also to realise that short-term measures can lead to disaster if their long-term consequences are not taken into account.

Author's Note

The Author has been write in the field of Sufi Islam & Barailvi Islam.