That there is an intense conflict between the Pakistani state and forces of radical Islam is now certain. Large tracts of Pakistan are now clearly violence-afflicted with a wide array of anti-state actors engaging in varying degrees of armed activity and subversion. A cursory look at the map indicates that the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Balochistan and North West Frontier Province (NWFP) are witnessing large-scale violence. Islamist extremist activities in parts of the Sindh and Punjab provinces have also brought these areas under the security scanner. The writ of the military regime under General Pervez Musharraf is currently being challenged vehemently – violently or otherwise – in wide geographical areas, and on a multiplicity of issues.

1471 persons, including 608 civilians and 325 Security Force (SF) personnel, died in terrorism/insurgency-related violence in Pakistan during year 2006. Crucially, this reflected well over a doubling in fatalities since 2005, when a total of 648 persons (including 430 civilians and 81 SF personnel) were killed in insurgent and terrorist conflicts. In the rapidly escalating trend, at least 639 people, including 212 civilians, 49 SF personnel and 378 militants, have already been killed in 2007 (till April 11). And the worst affected is Waziristan where an estimated 392 people, including 43 civilians, 11 soldiers and 338 terrorists, have died (till April 9).

Fatalities in Terrorist Violence, 2007

Truth, more often than not, exists in the small print. The daily reports of incidents of insurgent and terrorist activities in Pakistan fail to communicate the enormity of the trajectory of violence and instability that has been undermining the authority of the state in progressively widening areas of the country over the past years. But when the numbers are put together, the emerging picture of cumulative attrition would be more than disturbing for Islamabad. Moreover, considering Islamabad’s efforts to stifle information flows from the areas of conflict, the total number of fatalities may, in fact, be considerably higher.

The Balochistan province – accounting for approximately 44 per cent of Pakistan’s landmass – is now afflicted by an encompassing insurgency, as are most parts of North and South Waziristan in FATA – another three per cent of the country’s total landmass. Gilgit-Baltistan has long been simmering, and it is only the repeated cycles of repression and state-backed Sunni violence that have kept the restive population in rein in a region that accounts for another eight per cent of the country. At least 55 per cent of Pakistani territory is, consequently, outside the realm of civil governance and is currently dominated essentially through military force. Further, fairly regular incidents of militant violence and subversion have been reported from diverse parts of the NWFP, Punjab and Sindh provinces, even as these continue to provide safe-haven to a broad assortment of jihadi groups and other anti-state actors. Most of the violence in Balochistan is, however, 'nationalist' and there is no co-operation between Islamist terrorists in pockets in the North and the Baloch insurgents. While the violence level in Balochistan has decreased after the assassination of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti on August 26, 2006, the insurgency, nevertheless, continues to simmer and there has been a steady stream of bomb and rocket attacks on gas pipelines, railway tracks, power transmission lines, bridges, and communications infrastructure, as well as on military establishments and governmental facilities.

Some of the major terrorism/militancy related incidents of 2007 include:

April 6-11: Approximately 113 people died in sectarian clashes between Sunni and Shia combatants in the Kurram Agency of FATA.

April 6: Pro-government tribesmen overran strategic bunkers occupied by the Uzbek-led foreign al Qaeda militants in South Waziristan, killing at least 20 people.

April 4: Approximately 50 persons were killed during clashes between pro-government tribesmen and foreign militants in South Waziristan. A tribal army led by Maulana Nazir, a pro-government Taliban commander, captured the strategic Sheen Warsak after an encounter in which 19 Uzbeks, five tribesmen and three paramilitary soldiers were killed. In a separate encounter in Zaghunday, north of Sheen Warsak, the tribal army killed 25 Uzbeks.

March 30: Pro-government tribesmen exchanged heavy rocket and mortar fire with foreign militants linked to the al Qaeda in South Waziristan for a second day, leaving 56 people dead. Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao claimed that the dead included 45 foreigners.

March 28: At least 25 Taliban militants and a soldier were killed in a gun-battle that continued for six-hours at Tank in the NWFP. Tank District Police Officer Mumtaz Zarin said troops killed at least 25 militants when more than 200 Taliban cadres attacked the city from all sides. Two police stations, a paramilitary fort and several banks were looted in the attack. Curfew was imposed in the city and the civil administration asked the Army for help in preventing the Taliban from taking control of the city.

March 26: A police officer and two attackers were killed, while 13 persons sustained injuries when suspected militants attacked a police station, an Armoured Personnel Carrier and Frontier Corps fort with hand grenades in the Tank city of NWFP.

March 21: Five Frontier Corps personnel were killed and four injured when insurgents ambushed their vehicle in the Bramcha area of the Chagai District in Balochistan.

March 19-22: Nearly 160 people, including 130 foreign militants, were killed in four days of fighting between al Qaeda-linked militants and pro-Government tribesmen in South Waziristan.

March 6-7: Approximately 19 people died and several others were wounded during a clash between the Wazir Zalikhel sub-tribe and foreign militants near Azam Warsak in South Waziristan.

February 20: An Islamist ‘fanatic’ shot dead the Social Welfare Minister of Punjab province, Zile Huma Usman, in an open court in her hometown of Gujranwala in Punjab province. Muhammad Sarwar, who was arrested immediately, is reportedly a religious fanatic opposed to women being independent, and had earlier been implicated in four murders and two attempted murders in Gujranwala. "He considers it contrary to the teachings of Allah for a woman to become a minister or a ruler. That's why he committed this action," the police stated.

February 17: Seventeen people, including a senior civil judge, were killed and 30 others injured in a suicide bombing in the District Courts compound of Quetta, capital of Balochistan.

February 6: A suicide attacker blew himself up in the car park of Islamabad airport, killing himself and injuring 10 people.

February 3: A suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden jeep into a military convoy, killing two soldiers and injuring seven others in the Barakhel area of Tank district in NWFP.

January 29: A suicide bomber killed two people at Dera Ismail Khan in NWFP. Assistant Superintendent of Police, Captain Hamad, said that the suicide bomber, wearing a black shawl, blew himself up as the police was searching him.

January 27: Fifteen people, including six police officials, were killed and 60 others injured in a suicide attack targeting a Muharram procession near Qasim Ali Khan Mosque in Peshawar, capital of NWFP. Peshawar police commissioner Mallik Muhammad Saad, a Deputy Superintendent of Police, three other police personnel and a Nazim (local official) were among those killed.

January 26: A suicide bomber blew himself up outside Hotel Marriott in Islamabad, killing a guard, Tariq Mehmmod, and wounding five persons. The suicide bombing occurred hours before a Republic Day function at the hotel hosted by India’s High Commission.

January 22: A suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a military convoy near Mirali in North Waziristan, killing four SF personnel and a woman, and injuring 23 persons.

January 16: Pakistan Army helicopter gun-ships attacked a suspected militant hideout at Salamt village in South Waziristan, killing at least 20 militants.

Sectarian Violence in Pakistan, 2007

The flag of extremist Islam is, thus, fluttering vigorously across Pakistan, even as the state gradually withers away. Among the multiple insurgencies currently raging in Pakistan, the bloodiest is under way in South Waziristan – and it is symbolic of the decline of the State. In three weeks of clashes there between pro-government militants and foreign militants, primarily Uzbeks – and with little direct Government presence or intervention – at least 332 persons are reported to have died. The military, which had earlier failed in area domination exercises, announced, on April 9, that the pro-Government tribesmen had ‘cleared’ the Azam Warsak area of foreign militants. An unnamed official stated that some 2,000 ‘tribal volunteers’ and militants allied to ‘commander’ Maulana Nazir entered Azam Warsak on April 9-morning and hoisted white flags. "With God’s help, we have forced Qari Tahir Khan and his supporters to flee," Mullah Owais Hanafi, a spokesperson for the tribal army led by Maulana Nazir, declared. Qari Tahir Khan is the local name for Tahir Yuldashev, leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

Elsewhere in FATA, an estimated 113 persons were killed in sectarian violence that rocked Parachinar and other parts of the Kurram Tribal Agency on April 6-11. Sectarian clashes started on April 6-morning, when unidentified people opened fire at a Shia procession. Earlier, a Sunni procession had allegedly been pelted with stones and its participants abused. The use of heavy weapons by the combatants, including missiles, rocket launchers and mortars, was reported.

There is, moreover, now a clear dispersal of the violence linked to radical Islam across hitherto ‘peaceful’ areas. Violence and mobilization linked to Islamist extremists is now being reported from Swat, Nowshera, Tank, Peshawar, Hangu, Dera Ismail Khan, and other areas in the NWFP, Gujranwala and Multan in the Punjab province, many locations in Sindh province, and from the national capital, Islamabad. The writ of the state is clearly on the wane as seen in the March 28-incident when the Tank town in NWFP was attacked by a strong force of Taliban-linked militants, the first such incident in settled areas.

At the heart of this rapid march of radical Islam and dissident violence in Pakistan, and the consequent disorders of the past year and more, is the abysmal failure of President Musharraf’s much-vaunted "enlightened moderation". A fair indicator of the intensity of the problem is in the extremist movement currently being led by the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) and the Jamia Hafsa seminary in Islamabad. Incidentally, the two are located at a short distance from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) headquarters and Supreme Court in Islamabad. The sheer audacity of these two agents of radical Islam operating from the national capital, without any appropriate reaction from the security agencies, is baffling. The Lal Masjid brigade, among others, is demanding: rebuilding of the demolished mosques in Islamabad; immediate declaration of Sharia (Islamic law) in Pakistan; immediate promulgation of Quran and Sunnah in the courts of law; and "immediate discontinuation to declaring Jihad as terrorism by the Government as it is the great sacred religious duty of Muslims." The agitators have also given the Government a month to close brothels and music shops in Islamabad, and remove all advertisements depicting women. Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa are run by prominent clerics, Ghazi Abdul Rasheed and Maulana Abdul Aziz, sons of the slain (in 1998) cleric Maulana Abdullah, who reportedly patronised many jihadi groups.

Formally announcing the establishment of a parallel judicial system, the Lal Masjid, on April 6, 2007, vowed to enforce Sharia in Islamabad and threatened to unleash a wave of suicide bombers if the Government opposed them. Maulana Aziz threatened: "Our youth will commit suicide attacks, if the Government impedes the enforcement of the Sharia and attacks Lal Masjid and its sister seminaries." He also declared that his organization was supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan and Waziristan and acknowledged that students of his seminary had joined the Taliban.

It is interesting to note the state response in this regard. At a meeting on April 9, Ministers and officials of intelligence agencies reportedly opposed a crackdown on the Jamia Hafsa and Lal Masjid. Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao told the meeting, chaired by President Musharraf, that the Government could not afford the use of force against the seminary, since general elections were approaching. Intelligence officials reportedly argued that a crackdown would create a law and order situation in Islamabad and consequently strengthen Islamist extremists in the country. Javed Iqbal Cheema, Director-General of the National Crisis Management Cell, also opposed the use of force, "because we are already confronting difficult situations in Waziristan and Balochistan". Sources indicate that almost all participants at the meeting, including Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Law Minister Wasi Zafar and Information Minister Muhammad Ali Durrani, opposed a crackdown.

While the military regime’s capacity to maintain the writ of the state is gradually and clearly depleting, Gen. Musharraf’s problems are expected to multiply in an election year. In the past month, lawyers have organised strikes and demonstrations across Pakistan protesting the ‘suspension’ of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary. While Gen. Musharraf has alienated vast sections of the judiciary and the parliamentary parties in the run-up to elections, the rapid march of extremist Islam compounds his problems. Past experience in South Asia, including in India, has, moreover, shown that the recovery of geographical spaces, once anti-state violence escalates beyond threshold levels, is extraordinarily difficult. The preceding narrative is a clear indication that Gen. Musharraf has opened far too many fronts, his troops are overstretched, and there has been a comprehensive failure to control the widening insurgencies, sectarian strife and Islamist terrorist violence that now envelope large swathes of Pakistan.

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

Courtesy : South Asia Terrorism Portal

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