Taliban Lessons Unlearnt

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It's ironic that the day Pakistan's government agreed to a deal to impose Shari'a in Swat and other parts came on the 20th anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Because there were early warnings and signals that the US and the world community ignored at their peril in 1989, and there are the same ominous signs that the world isn't acting on today either. In 1989- Washington was only too eager to hand over Afghanistan to the forces that gave rise to the Taliban and close the chapter on its own assistance to them against the Soviets- in 2009 that haste is being paid for by the entire world.

In that sense, the imposition of Shari'a- is not just evidence of a creeping fundamentalism that has spread from Kabul to Peshawar- it must be seen as an important power shift in the region. In September 1996, the Taliban took Kabul and hanged Najibullah- in February 2009 they've simply battered the government of NWFP with guerilla warfare into accepting their writ in designated areas not far from the NWFP capital.

This isn't just about the Taliban wanting to put women in Burkhas, girls out of school, transistors turned off or men amputated for theft , this is about cold hard control of land and power. And like the threat of "Creeping Communism" or more modern Maoist philosophy- it's not important how you get there- popular demand, elections, or guerilla tactics, it's about getting there and establishing command. The rest will follow.

Many analysts point out that Shari'a itself is not new to the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) bordering NWFP that already follow Tribal Law. Even so the handover of the entire Malakand division- that houses the spectacular and once-popular ski destination, the Swat Valley is a dangerous turning point. It is not as much in the turn of law, that the world must worry, as in the idea of ceding parts of Pakistan's territory to that law.

By agreeing to a ceasefire with the Taliban group TNSM run by Sufi Mohammed, now controlled by his son-in-law "Radio Mullah"- the government is cutting a deal with groups that have killed thousands of Pakistani soldiers, blown up more than 200 girls schools forcing some 80,000 of them to stay home. They have beheaded hundreds of people, many of them women accused of 'adultery', convicted by their ad-hoc Shari'a courts in public executions and clamped a reign of fear across the area. To agree to their terms is to reward their cruel lawlessness by making them the law.

Reams have been written about the possibility of this being an inside deal- one struck between a sympathetic Army, and the Jehadi Army. In November 2008, retired Maj-Gen Alvi (Author VS Naipaul's brother-in-law) was gunned down in Islamabad just 2 days after he told a Sunday Times reporter in London that he was going to expose Generals within the Pakistani Army who were cutting pacts with Baitullah Mehsud and other Taliban leaders. Those links will no doubt be investigated further now- but the Swat deal needed more than the Army to approve- along with a blind eye from the international community.

Perhaps the biggest betrayal is to the people of Malakand themselves- nearly a year to the day they voted for the 'secular' ANP-PPP coalition, they have been handed back into the very extremism they tried to escape through the ballot. In the February 18 elections last year the Awami National Party led by Asfyandar Wali Khan, and the legacy of the "Frontier Gandhi" thundered to power along with Zardari's PPP, routing the Islamic MMA that had controlled the NWFP. The deal for the Nizam-eAdl regulation as the Shari'a legislation is known is a clear reversal of the people's mandate.

It is Wali Khan and Zardari who are presiding over this latest surrender- but while the U.S. remains engaged in Pakistan in the War on Terror yet mute to this particular battle that has been lost- it is condemned to repeat the lessons it didn't learn from Afghanistan twenty years ago.