Swat, Mullah Fazalullah and the ‘Terror Game’

“Con­grat­u­la­tions! You have the hon­our now”, a friend from Waziris­tan sar­cas­ti­cal­ly said that to me in the after­math of the new­ly select­ed TTP chief Mul­lah Faza­lul­lah while Dir has been announced as the new head­quar­ters of the Tehrik-e-Tal­iban Pak­istan (TTP). Accord­ing to the lat­est media reports Mul­lah Faza­lul­lah has already arrived in Dir.
Accord­ing to reports, Faza­lul­lah made it to Waziris­tan from Kunar in Afghanistan where he was hid­ing after being dri­ven away, or after ‘being shift­ed’, as some cyn­ics from Swat sug­gest, dur­ing the last mil­i­tary offen­sive in Swat in 2009.

The come­back of one of the most bru­tal com­man­ders of TTP and his lat­est design to have his bat­tle­ground, the Malakand divi­sion, as his head­quar­ters raised fears on one hand and rein­forced the usu­al con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries on the oth­er. While ordi­nary peo­ple like us in Swat dread this new devel­op­ment as a rein­force­ment of the fear of the brute, most local ‘polit­i­cal ana­lysts’ see it an arrange­ment by Pak­istan’s pow­er­ful secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment to warn the PTI and JI gov­ern­ment in the province against their deci­sion to with­draw troops from Swat and rest of Malakand divi­sion.

Despite the lapse of three years after the ‘suc­cess­ful’ oper­a­tion in Swat, the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries around the entire insur­gency phe­nom­e­non have not ceased; regard­less of the gory bru­tal­i­ties of the Tal­iban which con­tin­ued mean­while.
“We, the Urdu press peo­ple, regard Tal­iban and the mil­i­tary the same and do not dif­fer­en­ti­ate between these two forces while you, writ­ers in Eng­lish, think oth­er­wise and regard Tal­iban a sep­a­rate enti­ty”, a local Urdu dai­ly colum­nist exhort­ed me recent­ly.

“In the dark they used to be Tal­iban while in day­light these same men wore army uni­forms”, an elder­ly social activist told this writer.

In the entire war against the ter­ror­ists this con­fu­sion is the most unfor­tu­nate; and con­se­quent­ly gives the ter­ror­ists an edge over the mil­i­tary and the pub­lic.

The peo­ple of Malakand divi­sion espe­cial­ly of Swat were gen­er­al­ly shocked to know Mul­lah Fazalullah’s appoint­ment as new TTP chief because most of them have already tast­ed the vicious­ness of this man, who was then known as Mul­lah Radio in Swat. At his becom­ing the TTP leader and his mak­ing it to Waziris­tan and now to Dir from Afghanistan, the ques­tion has come up once again that how come Mul­lah Faza­lul­lah had man­aged to escape the grand Oper­a­tion Rah-e-Raast back in the sum­mer of 2009. Dur­ing this oper­a­tion, the peo­ple of Swat had to live amidst the cur­fews as long as 500 hours, the mem­o­ry of which still dis­turbs every mind here. Many ques­tions still haunt the minds of the peo­ple of Swat. Is it not a sheer fail­ure of our pow­er­ful secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus?

“We will leave Swat for good if it is again ‘allowed’ for the Tal­iban. We will leave it for ‘Pak­istan’ and its mil­i­tary. Enough is enough”. A taxi dri­ver in Swat switched off the music and sighed.

“Enough” should now be the call from all and sundry to end this game which has so far ren­dered over 50,000 Pak­ista­nis dead along with crush­ing the coun­try’s econ­o­my worth hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars.

Whether in the name of nation­al inter­est, strate­gic depth, or nation­al secu­ri­ty, and what­ev­er these ghosts are, the use of these prox­ies must be stopped now. Whether the Tal­iban and affil­i­ates are lured by talks or cured by force, the gov­ern­ment must bring per­ma­nent peace to Pak­istan.

Many peo­ple in Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa regard the talks with Tal­iban no more than a tac­tic to save Pun­jab from their attacks. They assert that in the Pun­jab dom­i­nat­ed gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary, talks with Tal­iban are not meant to end the ‘ter­ror­ism fran­chise’ but to con­vince the Tal­iban not to launch ter­ror­ist attacks in Pun­jab. It seems to make sense. For instance sit-ins and protests against the NATO sup­ply are always car­ried out in Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa ignor­ing the fact that the sup­ply route goes all through Sindh and Pun­jab. Imran Khan has cho­sen Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa his final bat­tle­ground against drones.

The peo­ple of Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa are prone to be manip­u­lat­ed by pol­i­tics of Pun­jab, Pak­istan or the region. They have also been too unpre­dictable in choos­ing their lead­ers. They vot­ed for the reli­gious alliance Mutahi­da Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) – an arrange­ment by Gen­er­al Mushar­raf in order to pro­long his rule – and had to bear the brunt for five years. Then the same vot­ers chose the Awa­mi Nation­al Par­ty which is a com­plete anti-the­sis of MMA; and more recent­ly the same peo­ple went for Pak­istan Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI). The lat­ter is quite dif­fer­ent from ear­li­er gov­ern­ments espe­cial­ly with regard to its for­eign pol­i­cy while on the oth­er hand it acts more like oppo­si­tion than the gov­ern­ment.
Con­trary to it Pun­jab is more sta­ble in choos­ing its hors­es. For the last many years the vot­ers in Pun­jab remained con­sis­tent in elect­ing their lead­ers despite the dra­mat­ic rise of PTI in the province. This could per­haps be one of the rea­sons that major nation­al and inter­na­tion­al games are eas­i­ly played in KPK.

While the ter­ror­ists being at the back­yard, the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries will grow ubiq­ui­tous and resent­ment in the peo­ple of Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa will nat­u­ral­ly grow. As long as Pak­istan adheres to its dubi­ous pol­i­cy regard­ing the entire ‘ter­ror game’ the peo­ple of the small­er provinces, KP and Balochis­tan, will be fur­ther alien­at­ed from being Pak­ista­nis.