ABSTRACT
It would be a trivialisation of the problem to explain away the spectre of Talibanisation that haunts Pakistan as a blowback of the policy of using jihad as an instrument of state. The roots of the problem are far deeper and can be traced back at least a couple of centuries. The jihadis or Pakistani Taliban draw their inspiration from Syed Ahmed Barelvi who led the “Hindustani fanatics” in the first half of the nineteenth century. Barelvi’s followers were based in precisely the areas that are today in the vanguard of the Islamist insurgency that Pakistan confronts on its western borderlands.1 The historical roots of the jihadi movement have coupled with the ideological confusion that has confronted the Pakistani state since it came into existence. Pakistan has still not been able to settle the debate on whether it was created as a state for Muslims or as a state for Islam. The dalliance of an increasingly dysfunctional state with the Islamists (for both political and strategic reasons), the inability to forge and nurture modern institutions and the identification with global Islamic causes together with the sense of victimisation, alienation and resentment that these causes fuel, have all combined to bring Pakistan to the current pass. Under intense international pressure, the Pakistani government was forced
in May 2009 to launch a military operation against the Taliban in the Swat valley. Alarm bells had been set off by the rapid advance of the Taliban who were merely 60 miles away from Islamabad after they moved into the Buner and Shangla districts of NWFP. The “Operation Rah-e-Rast” managed to wrest control of the Malakand division from the Taliban. But most of the top leaders and cadres of the Taliban have escaped the dragnet of the Pakistani authorities. With the military pressure mounting on Swat, the Taliban retaliated by launching a series of devastating terror attacks against targets in Pakistani cities, including on the General Headquarters of the Pakistan army in Rawalpindi. This forced the hand of the Pakistan army which was left with no choice but to launch another military operation against the Taliban – “Operation Rah-e-Nijat” in south Waziristan. This was an area that was widely seen to be the ground zero of the Taliban movement and over the last few years there was not even a semblance of state control in this area. Using their safe haven in south Waziristan, the
Taliban were able to operate with impunity and attack the symbols of the Pakistani state. Despite claims by the Pakistan army of resounding success in Operation
Rah-e-Nijat, there are enough reasons to be sceptical. As in Swat, in south Waziristan too almost the entire Taliban leadership and cadre has escaped. What is more, by its very nature the operation in south Waziristan was limited to targeting what the Pakistan army calls “Baitullah Mehsud’s network” of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). This was the faction of the Taliban that was directing its attacks not against the US-led NATO troops in Afghanistan but against the Pakistan army and government. The more ideologically driven Taliban – based in north Waziristan and parts of Balochistan – have in fact entered into deals with the Pakistan army to not interfere in the operations in south Waziristan. As far as the Baitullah Mehsud network is concerned, they have simply packed up and shifted their base to Orakzai and Kurram agencies in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Given the spread of the Islamist insurgency and given the estimates of the number of people associated with the Taliban both as combatants as well as supporters and sympathisers – Pashtun journalist Aqeel Yusufzai estimates over 100,000 Taliban combatants across various factions – the war against the Taliban is going to be a very long drawn out one.2
