In 2003, approximately 80,000 Pakistani troops were deployed to neutralise the Al Qaeda- Taliban combine in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). But three years after Pakistani soldiers first entered FATA, there is very little to cheer about for Islamabad.

Pakistan’s ‘lawless frontier’ is now clearly in the grip of Islamist extremist forces, which have mounted the most serious challenge so far against Islamabad. The resistance has spiked this year, and according to one estimate approximately 400 people, including 60 Security Force (SF) personnel, have died so far. Between January 2005 and June 10, 2006, there were at least 394 incidents (Data: South Asia Terrorism Portal) in which approximately 806 people died and 494 were wounded (given the erratic reportage and Islamabad’s understated accounts, the actual numbers could be much higher). The sheer volume of incidents of violence in Waziristan has been high with 156 already recorded in year 2006 alone. Geographically, the violence that was earlier confined to South Waziristan has now spread to North Waziristan, with an increasing spillover into the adjacent North West Frontier Province (NWFP) as well.

A look at the current security and socio-political matrix of the region suggests that the state has suffered a significant retreat. Islamist extremist forces, evidently, provide a semblance of what is denied by the legitimate state structure. There has been a stream of reports indicating that clerics were replacing chieftains in all committees in South Waziristan. The Taliban has reportedly opened recruiting offices in the Wana, Makeen and Barwend areas of South Waziristan. The state’s retreat has also meant that the Taliban now also assumes a role in the political administration in certain areas of Waziristan.

The social sphere has for long been the focus of radical Islam in Pakistan. The Taliban was a state of mind even before it became a regime in Afghanistan. In a mirrored evolution, moral policing and social edicts are now an accepted reality in Waziristan: shopkeepers are debarred from trading in music or films in any manner, barbers have been ordered not to shave beards, and women have been told not to go to the market or other public places. Cleric Asmatullah Shaheen announced in the Jandol area of South Waziristan in April 2006 that people were not to shave. Further, in Barmal village, Mufti Fazal-ur-Rehman Fazli circulated a pamphlet claiming that Jews and Christians were encouraging Muslims to take anti-polio drops in a conspiracy to make them infertile. Radical clerics command men to grow beards and veil their women, cameras are banned, and people are being forced to stop watching television or listening to music. Reacting to reports of television sets being set ablaze at Malakand in the NWFP, President Musharraf nonchalantly noted, "This is a Talibanized mindset. It has spread. It has to be stopped. Now we are in a different ball game.”

Unsurprisingly, security force personnel, administrators loyal to Islamabad, pro-government tribal leaders and journalists, have become obvious targets of rising violence. Baidar, a Wazir tribesman, told Reuters on May 30, 2006, "Almost all malakan (pro-government tribal elders) have left Waziristan." Echoing the fears of ordinary tribesmen in arguably the most underdeveloped area of Pakistan, Baidar said, "The real worry is for businessmen and educated people because they fear being targeted or killed by the Taliban on suspicion of being informers for the Government or America.”

State retreat has rendered the tribal elder vulnerable. The Malakan wield immense influence in the region and also play a crucial part in the state’s strategy in curbing the mounting power of the Islamist extremists. In the Taliban onslaught, approximately 150 pro-government elders and politicians have been killed over the past nine months in Waziristan. More importantly, it is an indication of the tribal system of political administration being dismantled, both by the presence of the Army and by terrorist violence orchestrated by groups and individuals linked to the Taliban/Al Qaeda. Noted Pakistani analyst Rahimullah Yousufzai observes, “Before the Army came, things were very quiet in Waziristan… Whole villages have now been displaced. After any bombing, the whole village leaves because they know the Army will come and search and detain people. Schools are closed; there are no jobs. That's how village after village has turned against the Army. And they side with the militants…”

Taliban-linked operatives have reportedly opened offices and set up check-posts at the main marketplace in Wana, collecting toll from vehicles. They have also set up a court to conduct summary trials. Bringing back memories of the gruesome Taliban executions in Afghanistan, a man ‘convicted’ of killing his son was shot dead in front of a crowd of 150 people in late March 2006. Earlier in December 2006, at least seven alleged bandits at Miranshah in North Waziristan were killed and their mutilated corpses hung from an electric pole. A DVD of the macabre incident was widely circulated subsequently. The state, meanwhile, preferred to overlook these incidents and did nothing to stop these public executions. Nor has anything been done to encumber the movement of the ‘local Taliban’ who continue to consolidate their presence, encouraged by the state’s inaction.

That there is a considerable amount of coercion involved in the Taliban strategy is now clear. An offender can escape being executed by the Taliban by registering for the jihad in Afghanistan at the militant’s recruiting office in South Waziristan. Anyone who opposes the Taliban faces considerable risk, and the safest course is to “register with them and stay silent.” In North Waziristan, the Taliban reportedly have an unsettling manner of issuing an ultimatum. To a targeted man, they send a needle with a long thread and Rupees 1,000 in cash and a message that they will kill him in 24 hours. The money is meant for the target’s family to obtain burial cloth and the needle/thread for stitching it.

Crucially, there is no single leader who is driving this resurrection within Pakistan. Instead, there are a number of ‘commanders’ who claim control of select areas in FATA and some militiamen who are essentially local leaders. While the extent of co-ordination between them is still unclear, what is known is that they all owe allegiance to the Taliban and venerate its fugitive chief Mullah Mohammed Omar and the Al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden.

One such leader is Haji Mohammad Omar, whose supporters are known to wander around Wana, headquarters of South Waziristan, with rocket launchers mounted on the back of their pick-up trucks. A veteran of the Afghan campaign in the 1980s, Haji Omar, incidentally, was granted an amnesty and also paid off by the Government in 2004 in exchange of an assurance that he would not incite militancy in the region. Indeed, the Islamist extremists’ capacity to strengthen their position has been largely engineered by the very militants who were handed out large amounts of monies by the Government. Along with Haji Omar, Abdullah Mehsud, another Taliban ‘commander’, had also cut a deal with the Army. Baitullah Mehsud, Sadiq Noor and Abdul Khaliq are among the other leaders.

The Taliban in North Waziristan have now also threatened to launch suicide attacks, a hitherto unknown ‘weapon’ in the region, if tribal people were searched at security check-posts. On June 2, two suicide attackers detonated an explosives-laden car near a military convoy on a road linking Miranshah in North Waziristan and Bannu in the NWFP, killing four soldiers and injuring seven others.

The more immediate danger for Islamabad is in the geographical extension of ‘Talibanisation’. President Musharraf has himself admitted that the Taliban influence was spreading from tribal areas to neighbouring settled areas. For instance, at Tank in the NWFP, armed men linked to the Taliban ‘patrol’ the streets at night on motorcycles. Edicts similar to those issued in Waziristan are reportedly also being issued at Tank and Dera Ismail Khan in the NWFP. According to one April 2006 report, “In Swat District, some pro-Taliban clerics set television sets on fire. In Peshawar, clerics have threatened to take action against those cable operators who show western television channels and FM radio transmitters set up in mosques are used to propagate their own radical version of Islam.” It is also in such ‘settled areas’ of the NWFP that some Taliban operatives are reportedly taking refuge after escaping the Army crackdown in FATA.

According to sources, the border town of Chaman in Balochistan also serves as the nucleus of Taliban activities, with many operatives crossing over into Afghanistan during end March and early April 2006 to prepare for the “spring offensive” and the poppy harvest. Colonel Chris Vernon, British chief of staff for southern Afghanistan, has further disclosed that the Taliban leadership is coordinating attacks from Quetta, capital of Balochistan province.

Despite occasional successes, Pakistani troops, with a fair measure of assistance from the U.S. military across the border in Afghanistan, have largely been unable to move out of their fortified positions to carry out area domination exercises, with the result that a large expanse of territory continues to remain under the influence of the Taliban-backed terrorists. In many places, the security forces have been pulled out and the offices of the political administration have also been moved to safer locations or abandoned totally. While a military retreat looks implausible at the moment, a tactical withdrawal into defensible concentrations may be forced.

Disorder in FATA is also, undoubtedly, linked to developments in Afghanistan. Fatalities across the border in the current year have been high, with a Newsline June 2006 report claiming “more than 400 Afghans and 34 coalition soldiers have been killed in the unprecedented offensive by Taliban insurgents.” Approximately 1,500 persons, including 84 American troops, died during 2005. The Taliban, who are now more organised and better equipped, control as many as 20 Districts in the Kandahar, Uruzgan, Zabul and Helmand provinces, where NATO forces have replaced US troops. Mullah Dadullah, reportedly the ‘chief commander’ of the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, and whose presence has been observed in the past at Chaman in Pakistan, claims to have 12,000 cadres. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the Combined Force commander in Afghanistan, disclosed at a news briefing on May 10, 2006 that, in eastern Afghanistan, the security is “much better than it was a year ago.” However, he added, in southern Afghanistan, there have been increases in incidents of violence over the spring compared to last year’s baseline. In the south, there are several districts in northern Kandahar, northern Helmand and Uruzgan where the Taliban influence is noticeably stronger than it was in 2005.

In addition to a growing support base, the Taliban has also changed its operational strategy in Afghanistan and achieved a fair measure of ‘success’. Along with hit-and-run attacks, they now frequently engage the coalition forces and Afghan Army in direct encounters and carry out frontal assaults on “occupation forces”. They also carry out suicide bombings on a regular basis. There are reportedly more than 600 ‘volunteers’ being trained for suicide missions. The Taliban, according to Gen. Eikenberry’s briefing, has shifted to the increasing use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs, reportedly the number-one killer of American forces in Iraq. There are reports on the transfer of IED tactics and techniques from Iraq to Afghanistan) and suicide bombers. They also carry out an “intimidation campaign against moderate religious and tribal leaders… [are] burning down schools and coercing in certain instances and districts the closure of schools.”

Though the combined operational effectiveness of Afghan-US Forces has been relatively good, it is the competing foreign policy agendas that are the biggest obstacle in dealing with the Taliban and the Pakistan-Afghanistan quagmire. Pakistan’s ambivalence and strategic ambitions have impeded effective action, and provided abiding safe haven and an expanding sphere of dominance to the Taliban-Al Qaeda combine in its border areas, and, despite the country’s own rising difficulties, there does not appear to be a sufficient determination to make the necessary changes in policy and strategic objectives that must precede effective action against the Taliban. The Taliban consolidation and violence on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border can, consequently, be expected to continue to grow in the foreseeable future.

The writer is Research Fellow at Institute for Conflict Management, New Delhi.

Courtesy : South Asia Terrorism Portal

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