The NWFP is swiftly crystallizing at the core of the Islamist militant mobilisation in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region even as radical Islamists rapidly expand their presence across Pakistan’s other provinces. It is significant that the NWFP is a region where the state’s presence has been relatively strong in the past, and the situation has never been even remotely comparable to the traditionally ungoverned Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The deteriorating situation in the NWFP is also an indication of increasing political instability and insecurity in Pakistan, and of the weakening of the embattled President Pervez Musharraf’s grip on power.

According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, throughout 2006, approximately 163 people were killed in NWFP in more than 84 incidents. Just the first five months of year 2007 (till May 18) have already seen at least 149 people, including 100 civilians and 18 security force (SF) personnel, killed in the province, a clear index of the mounting violence. A significant proportion of these fatalities have occurred in suicide attacks, with at least six of the 10 suicide attacks in Pakistan in 2007 (till May 18) having occurred in the NWFP. The recent suicide attacks in the NWFP include:

May 15, 2007: Twenty-five people were killed and at least 35 injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up on the ground floor of the Marhaba Hotel in Peshawar. The attack occurred at approximately 12:50 pm when the restaurant was crowded with customers for lunch.

April 28, 2007: Thirty-one people, including five police personnel, were killed and the Federal Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao and his young son Sikandar Sherpao Khan were among several people wounded in a suicide attack, moments after the Minister finished a speech at a public rally in his hometown Charsadda. The head of the suicide bomber, who was aged between 30 and 35 years, was found at the site of the blast near Station Koroona, and Inspector General of Police Sharif Virk noted that "he looks like an Afghan".

February 3, 2007: A suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden jeep into a military convoy, killing two soldiers and injuring seven in the Barakhel area of Tank District.

February 3, 2007: A suspected militant blew himself up while planting a bomb outside a video and music shop in Lakki Marwat. The blast damaged a dozen nearby shops in the town, a settled area near Bannu District.

January 29, 2007: A suicide bomber killed three people, including two police personnel, at Dera Ismail Khan. Assistant Superintendent of Police, Captain Hamad, stated that the suicide bomber blew himself up as policeman, Abdul Halim, was searching him.

January 27, 2007: Fifteen people, including six police officials, were killed and 60 others injured in a suicide attack targeting a Muharram (Shia religious) procession near Qasim Ali Khan Mosque in Peshawar. The Peshawar Police Commissioner, Mallik Muhammad Saad, a Deputy Superintendent of Police, three other police personnel and a Nazim (local official) were among those killed.

November 17, 2006: A suicide bomber, identified as Nadeem Khan, killed himself and injured two police personnel when he targeted a police van at the Bara intersection on the Ring Road in Peshawar.

November 8, 2006: A suicide bomber blew himself up at an Army training centre at Dargai, killing 42 and injuring 39 recruits of the Punjab Regiment Centre and their instructor.

The NWFP is spread over an area of 74,521 square kilometres and is divided into 24 Districts, with a population of 17.7 million. Located on the banks of the Indus River, it stretches from the Himalayas in the north to the deserts of the south bordering the Balochistan and Punjab provinces. Afghanistan lies along its extended Western border.

A pro-Taliban Government headed by the Islamist Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) alliance rules the NWFP. Fugitive Taliban chief, Mullah Mohammed Omar, and other leaders of the Taliban schooled at the Haqqania seminary in the Nowshera District of NWFP, which is run by Maulana Sami-ul-Haq, leader of his own faction of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e Islam and one of the most prominent patrons of the Taliban. Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly and another stalwart of the militant Islamist movement, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, and his two brothers Maulana Ataur Rehman and Maulana Lutfur Rehman, reside in a compound adjacent to a madrassa (seminary) at Shorkot in the Dera Ismail Khan District of the province.

Law Minister Malik Zafar Azam, on April 18, 2007, disclosed that the NWFP Government was investigating the activities of local Taliban in some settled areas of the province to identify the leadership and masterminds behind their extremist activities. According to Azam, the Taliban were particularly active in the province’s southern Districts – Lakki Marwat, Dera Ismail Khan, Bannu and Karak. Militant activity has also been reported from the Lower Dir, Upper Dir, Swat, Mardan, Malakand, Charsadda, Peshawar, Nowshera, Tank, Hangu, Kohat, Mansehra, Kohistan, Swabi and Chitral Districts. 19 of the 24 Districts in the Province are presently affected by various levels of militant mobilisation and violence. Bomb blasts, rocket attacks, forced closure of video shops, internet centres and girls’ schools, attacks on NGOs employing women, attacks on singers performing at weddings and threatening calls to barbers are some of the intimidatory activities local Taliban are engage in. The situation in Dera Ismail Khan is so grave that "outsiders – that is, Pakistanis from other parts of the country – need police escorts to travel around."

The pro-Taliban militants have ensured the closure of girls' schools, bombed shops selling video cassettes and music CDs and prohibited barbers from shaving beards. The extremists punish, often by killing, anyone who disregards their social and moral codes. Moral policing has not spared even the polio vaccination campaign which the forces of radical Islam consider to be an American conspiracy to sterilise future Muslim generations. The pro-Taliban militants oppose education for females and are also against women working. Girls’ schools have not only been closed in Peshawar but also in some Districts such as Mardan.

All hair cutting saloons in Timergarah, headquarters of the Lower Dir District, and Munda have discontinued shaving services since pamphlets advising them that it was an Islamic duty to grow a beard were distributed by an unidentified Islamist group on March 13, 2007. Barbers "in both the Lower and Upper Dir districts have received pamphlets from the extremists directing them to stop shaving beards," failing which their shops would be destroyed. Fear prevails among the saloons, music and video shop owners since there have been many bomb blasts and attacks on their establishments. Threat letters and pamphlets of the Taliban-linked militants bear names such as Sunnat-e-Nabvi Movement, Islami Sunnat-e-Rasool, Amar Bil Maroof-wa-Nahi Anil Munkar and Islami Janbaaz, all unfamiliar fronts.

The minority Christians are also targeted by the militants, who have told them to convert to Islam or face dire consequences. Such intimidation has led to fear among 50 Christian families in Charsadda, 35 kilometres from Peshawar. Shahbaz Bhatti, head of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, on May 16, 2007, disclosed that the families received threat letters and were given a 10-day deadline to convert to Islam or vacate their homes. Several Christians, consequently, have fled Charsadda and others are living in fear.

Administrative control in Districts like Tank, Swat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Lakki Marwat, Kohat and in other parts of the Province, has gradually been taken over by the forces of radical Islam. Indeed, a demoralised Police force is clearly no longer able to maintain law and order in these areas. The Tank District, located on the border of the beleaguered South Waziristan area of FATA, is one of the worst affected. With the abdication of the state, it is the Taliban who patrol the streets. Taliban-linked militants have established kangaroo courts for settling disputes in the area and are also arresting ‘criminals’ and parading and punishing them in the streets. The police have reportedly abandoned four out of the five major police posts in Tank. On March 28, 2007, Tank town was attacked by a group of more than 200 Taliban-linked militants, the first such incident in settled areas. Two police stations, a paramilitary fort and bank branches were damaged in the attack. Again, six people were killed and 15 others injured, in clashes between security forces (SFs) and militants in Tank city on May 16, 2007. People alleged that SFs fired on civilians instead of targeting militants who were strutting freely around the city. Earlier, a paramilitary soldier and a civilian were killed and 10 people wounded in grenade and rocket attacks on troops and exchange of fire between militants and troops in Tank on May 14, 2007.

Taliban-linked militants also reportedly control Darra Adam Khel in the Kohat District. Official reports suggest that the Taliban in Darra Adam Khel, a major arms manufacturing hub, have a direct link with the Taliban in North Waziristan, where they are sending young recruits for training, while weapons are being supplied to militants in North Waziristan from Darra Adam Khel.

The provincial capital, Peshawar has witnessed 16 bomb explosions since September 18, 2006 and there have already been two suicide attacks in the city in 2007 in which 40 persons have died. While some girls’ schools in Peshawar have closed down after the administration received threatening letters, recent militant attacks have targeted, among others, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Airport and a women’s college.

While there is a considerable spill-over of militancy from the tribal areas to the settled areas of NWFP, the fact is that the state has itself ceded space for radical Islam. The ‘peace deal’ signed in Waziristan between the militants and the military regime has further emboldened the Islamist radicals and led to a greater assertiveness with militants now operating openly and without fear. The NWFP has emerged as a safe haven and area of expansion for militants from Waziristan, which they already dominate, as well as extremist elements from other parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The official explanation of these developments, articulated by NWFP Governor Ali Mohammad Jan Orakzai, was that the Taliban was "developing into some sort of a nationalist movement, a sort of liberation war against coalition forces (in Afghanistan)." Moreover, the police force, according to provincial Chief Secretary Ejaz Qureshi, is "inadequately equipped in terms of manpower, logistics and weaponry, rendering the NWFP cities vulnerable." A retired police officer noted further, "Where law and order and justice vanish there the Taliban emerge and the public response is positive because the people want protection irrespective of who provides it."

On February 14, 2007, President Musharraf had stated that the Tribal Areas (FATA) will be amalgamated into the NWFP after the Taliban and al Qaeda elements are eliminated from the region. Musharraf added that his Government had started work towards this end in 2000 with the consent of tribal elders. "We should have amalgamated FATA into the NWFP province much earlier. We had the same idea when our forces entered the area," he claimed. While the Taliban/al Qaeda combine are nowhere close to being eliminated either in the FATA, NWFP or elsewhere in Pakistan, any such ‘amalgamation’ would only widen the existing safe havens for the militants.

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

Courtesy : South Asia Terrorism Portal

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