Pakistan’s tribal areas is slipping

It is obvious that the tribal areas are out of control. What is worrisome is the fact that it threatens to snowball into a process that will bring back the Taliban and the Al Qaeda back to power. President Pervez Musharraf has singularly failed in bringing about reforms and control. Most of the suicide bombers in Pakistan have come from the region of Waziristan and even those who seem to be fighting the Taliban have a fanatical religious agenda to pursue.

by HASSAN ABBAS

The government of President Pervez Musharraf faces policy failure in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. Taliban forces and their sympathizers are becoming entrenched in the region and are aggressively expanding their influence and operations (especially in Tank, Dera Ismail Khan and Swat Valley in North-West Frontier Province - NWFP).

A lethal combination of Musharraf’s political predicament and declining public support, a significant rise in suicide attacks targeting the army, and the reluctance of soldiers in the area to engage tribal gangs militarily, further exacerbates this impasse.

Observing this, many militants associated with local Pakistani jihadi groups have moved to FATA to help their “brothers in arms” and benefit from the sanctuary. In the midst of this, election season is descending on Pakistan for the parliament. This has consequences for Pakistan’s policy in the FATA region as it will predictably revert to “peace deals” in the short term, leading to a lowering of the number of military checkpoints in the area.

If history is any indicator, this will help Talibanization in the region and provide more opportunities to the Inter-Services Intelligence to indirectly support some Taliban commanders sympathetic to Pakistan’s objectives. Poor coordination between the Pakistani army and the Western coalition in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai’s failure to make Afghanistan a functional state, and the abundance of drug money in southern Afghanistan are some of the important variables in this context. Additionally, Musharraf admits that the crisis in the area is increasingly turning out to be a Pashtun insurgency.

However, the factors that “limit” Pakistan’s effective clampdown on all things Taliban in FATA remain linked to its fear about increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan if the Taliban are comprehensively defeated, and the lack of Pakistani public support for anything that appears to be done in pursuance of the US-led global “war on terror”. These perceptions significantly affect the morale of army commanders and soldiers operating in the region.

Musharraf has largely failed to make a strong case to his people about the need for strong military action against the Taliban in FATA. He has often called this policy as being in the “national interest”, but has not convincingly explained how the army alone defines the national interest. More so, Pakistanis have seen the military defining such interests too often in the past with devastating effects for the state, and interpret Pakistan’s current fight against the Taliban in terms of succumbing to US demands and interests.

With this backdrop in view, this analysis outlines what is happening today in each of the seven tribal agencies in FATA and what the implications are for Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States.

Bajaur Agency overlooks Afghanistan’s Kunar province, where US forces are battling al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri escaped the reportedly Central Intelligence Agency-led attack at Damadola in Bajaur on January 13, 2006, while one of his close relatives was among the 18 killed.

Damadola is considered a stronghold of Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi and Jamaat-e-Islami units, and the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam has representationin parliament from Bajaur. Bajaur during the 1980s and 1990s was known as the “Poppy Kingdom” and many Afghan refugee camps (functioning until 2005) were a source of pro-Taliban recruitment in the area.

In August, talks between the Taliban and a tribal jirga (supported by the Pakistani government) to improve the law and order situation in Bajaur failed as the Taliban wanted the government to first release some arrested militants. Trouble had broken out in the area with the news of the proposed construction of a US helipad in Afghanistan’s Kunar province as the tribal leaders sympathetic to the Taliban framed it as a threat to Pakistan.

The strength of the Taliban in the area can be gauged from two recent events: since July last year, they have successfully enforced Friday as the weekly holiday instead of Sunday, which is the official weekly holiday; secondly, Abdul Ghani Marwat, who headed the government’s vaccination campaign in Bajaur, was killed in a bomb attack early last year amid the Taliban-sponsored rumor that the Pakistani government-run polio vaccination drive was a US plot to sterilize Muslim children. The rumor was so widespread (projected by Taliban fatwas) that, according to government estimates (which are always conservative), parents of around 24,000 children had refused to give them the polio vaccine.

Khyber Agency Khyber Agency is the main artery connecting Peshawar to Kabul via the Khyber Pass. Today, many men are seen wearing traditional caps in the agency because of fear, as a local religious outfit sympathetic to the Taliban, Lashkar-i-Islam (Army of Islam), has declared it binding on all men of the agency to wear caps. The leader of the group, Mangle Bagh, in his radio address re-affirmed this edict and announced that violators’ heads would be shaved and they would face a monetary fine.

After banning music in the tribal areas, the local Taliban in Khyber Agency have also started fining taxi drivers and citizens Rs500 (about US$8) for listening to music cassettes in their cars. Also recently, militants started distributing pamphlets in Bara Bazaar in Khyber Agency saying that the “Taliban have finally reached Bara”, while warning that “if anyone tries to hinder our movement and activities, we will launch a holy war against them”.

In comparison to other tribal agencies, Khyber Agency (because of its proximity to Peshawar, the capital of NWFP) is more accessible to Pakistani government functionaries and some development work has been done in the area. For instance, in 2005, Stephen Hadley, the then adviser on national security to President George W Bush, inaugurated a primary school building project in Surkamar town of Khyber Agency that was financed by the US and Japanese governments in collaboration with the FATA secretariat. Conditions have changed for the worse since then.

Kurram Agency Surrounded by lofty mountains and Afghan territory on three sides, Kurram Agency is the second largest tribal region in FATA. Its headquarters is in Parachinar, about 90 kilometers from Kabul. According to intelligence estimates, it was also the first geographical point where fleeing al-Qaeda members from Afghanistan landed after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The government of Pakistan is planning to construct two small dams in the agency at a cost of Rs400 million in fiscal year 2007-08 to improve the agricultural sector and thereby improve the economic situation in the area. This will be an important test case for Pakistan, success of which can help the state machinery to increase its control at least in this area as it is an important transit point for cross-border movement into Afghanistan.

As early as late 2005, Pakistani Taliban leaders had declared an Islamic state in North Waziristan. Pakistan opted to cut a peace deal with the power brokers in the area in September 2006(after convincing the US administration of its utility), but the strategy failed. Now, abductions of government functionaries and soldiers of the Frontier Corps are a matter of routine. The Taliban of the area maintain that direct US attacks amounted to a violation of the peace deal and hence they are retaliating. Roadside bombs are now a common occurrence. Even those providing food to the army units in the area are targeted.

South Waziristan is at the center of Taliban and al-Qaeda activities in the region along with neighboring North Waziristan. Recently, Mehsud tribesmen aligned with Taliban forces abducted 205 Pakistani troops(135 army soldiers and 70 Frontier Corps troops) along with seizing 20 of their vehicles. The most striking fact, however, is that the government forces offered no resistance while being kidnapped.

After more than three weeks, a majority of the soldiers are still in the custody of the Taliban, and the government has been practically forced to engage in negotiations with them. This reflects government weakness in the face of their growing strength and influence, to say the least. Pamphlets being distributed in the agency, while warning local tribes not to side with government forces, assert that “like in Afghanistan, we have established suicide squads for attacks on troops and their allies in Pakistan”.

A United Nations report released said that 80% of suicide bombers in Afghanistan had come from the Waziristan agencies. Yet while the Pakistani government has offered to introduce reforms in FATA, little has been done. Political agents continue to dole out funds to handpicked people, often in an attempt to buy peace - hardly an inclusive policy. The US$750 million worth of US aid for the uplift of FATA is in the pipeline, but there is no publicly known strategy in place on how to channel the funds, leading to much apprehension and conspiracy theories about who will really benefit in the area.

Furthermore, Pakistan has been rattled by 39 suicide attacks in 2007 before the attack that claimed Benazir’s life, so far killing about 350 people, and most of these attacks targeted the Pakistani army, the Frontier Corps and government officials in FATA and the NWFP. A series of attacks in the Rawalpindi region in August was especially meant to attack the Special Services Group (an elite commando unit) and the Inter-Services Intelligence.

This is unprecedented in Pakistan. Many interpret these attacks as a consequence of Musharraf’s tough handling of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) crisis in July. Clearly, a majority of these attacks relate to the volatile FATA situation and the Pakistani army is now on the defensive. The killings of Abdullah Mehsud and Mullah Dadullah were expected to hit Taliban forces hard, but the Taliban are showing uncommon resilience.

Indeed, Musharraf’s capacity to respond militarily is curtailed because of political compulsions. For Afghanistan and the United States, this means a troublesome scenario. Pakistan’s return to democracy may potentially changethings for the better, but Musharraf’s move in this direction is sluggish and uncertain.