April 19, 2009 marked a watershed in the Pakistani military establishment’s unrealistic view of Islamist militant groups. The then general officer commanding, Major General Ejaz Awan, and his troops had convinced the aging Maulana Sufi Muhammad to denounce suicide bombings at a public rally in the heart of Mingora, the administrative headquarter of Swat valley.
Live on private TV channels, and facing thousands of people at the Grassy Ground, Sufi did not condemned violence, but declared Western-style democracy, the Pakistani parliament, the Supreme Court and the state un-Islamic, and thus turned the tables on the army. It was an utter shock to the military establishment which had hoped to take the sting out of Mullah Fazlullah’s terror campaign by having his father-in-law speak against violence by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the valley.
All this happened in the context of the second peace deal in the area on February 19, 2009, which had taken place with mutual agreement between the Awami National Party and the General Headquarters, as yet another attempt to wrest Swat back from the TTP. But between February 19 and April 19, the TTP had ambushed or robbed dozens of military convoys, snatched government vehicles, practically run or occupied government offices, and sat in courts. The TTP had also ruthlessly executed three Pakistan Army commandos caught from the mountains between Swat and Buner.
This prompted a meeting at the GHQ on April 25, wherein the alarmed top brass decided to go for the kill. “When you raise a puppy, it becomes a member of the family, but when it develops rabies, it becomes an enemy, and that is the time to cull it,” Gen Awan had remarked when reminded of the unholy nexus that had existed between some Taliban factions and the security apparatus.
The army seemed to have learned its first lesson the hard way. The eventual May 7 invasion of TTP strongholds in the Swat valley practically ended the peace deal and gradually took Swat to where it is today.
Similarly, the September 5, 2006 agreement in North Waziristan town had apparently ended hostilities between the Pakistani military and TTP rebels linked to the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda in the region. But the killing of about 50 soldiers and paramilitary men in an ambush in North Waziristan practically broke that truce.
Signed by representatives of all the tribes and the representatives of the Haqqanis, the 16-point agreement obligated the government to stop air and ground attacks against militants in Waziristan. In return, the militants agreed to cease cross-border movement into and out of Afghanistan, and to expel foreigners from North Waziristan, but “those who cannot leave will be allowed to live peacefully, respecting the law of the land and the agreement”.
But until the suspension of the agreement in September 2007, following the ambush of a Pakistan Army convoy (as well as several other attacks), militants kept crossing the border, facilitating the passage of foreign fighters to Afghanistan via Waziristan, and hardly stopped the terrorist training camps being run in the mountainous Shawaal, Ladha and Makeen regions.
Whether a peace agreement with a non-state actor – whose rationale for rebelling against the state lies across the border or rests in a trans-national militant ideology – is worth pursuing requires a critical look at three such deals – in Shakai (South Waziristan), Miranshah (North Waziristan) and Swat.
Firstly, without a doubt, the TTP and its associates used the peace deals in Swat and North Waziristan as a cover to exploit the porous and compromised governance and security structures and continue their terrorist activities on both sides of the border. At least another four major peace deals between 2004 and 2009 had also fallen flat because of an inherent message of weakness from the panicked state and its institutions.
Secondly, the May 2004 Shakai Agreement – signed under a blitz of cameras by Naik Mohammad Wazir and General Safdar Hussein, filled up non-state actors with a sense of power, a larger-than-life stature. Under the FCR, a low-ranking official would simply summon a wayward tribesman and discuss with him the issue. In this case, a major general went to Naik Mohammad’s home to sign the deal. The general, in fact, violated the “rules” that govern life in FATA, and ended up glorifying what the likes of Naik Mohammad did or do to the state.
Thirdly, almost all of the dozen or so peace deals or arrangements resulted in the release of scores of alleged fighters, and mobilized tens of millions in compensation given to people identified by the militants as the “victims of conflict.” The insurgents succeeded in projecting the state as an aggressor, although the state institutions were only doing their duty under the constitution.
Lessons from the insurgencies currently raging in India, or those in Sri Lanka and Ireland, are very instructive in this regard. Most Indian and Sri Lankan security experts advise against approaching talks with non-state rebels from a position of weakness. A military solution is a must before going for any political solution, and that policy should be based on the understanding of the root cause of insurgencies. This is what a group of experts recommended after a debate on the “Counter Insurgency Operations in North East India: Operations without a policy”, held at The Terrorism and Internal Security Cluster of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) on March 21, 2011. They also recommended that security forces fighting at the ground level should be given independence for taking decisions to curb the insurgency.
Writing for Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College (SSI), Durga Madhab (John) Mitra argues that careful consideration should be given to the likely outcome of governmental efforts, particularly in the areas already dominated by insurgents and in the areas inhabited by relatively isolated tribes. Outside influences inciting the insurgency should be denied access to vulnerable areas by construction of physical barriers, Mitra says.
Speaking of the lessons learned from the conflict in Ireland, Jonathan Powell, the author of Great Hatred, Little Room: Making Peace in Northern Ireland, and former chief of staff to premier Tony Blair, considers talks with “insurgents” as an absolutely essentials means for peace but also underlines the need for military pressure. If there is a political problem at the root of the conflict, then there has to be a political solution. That is not to say that security measures have no place. On the contrary, they are essential. Without security pressure downwards, insurgents will find life comfortable and have no incentive to make the tough decisions necessary for peace. But security pressure by itself without offering a political way out will simply cause the insurgents to fight to the last man. Powell also advises (probably the publicity-hungry Pakistani leadership) to maintain absolute secrecy while talking – directly or indirectly – to groups challenging the state. He cautions not to project breakthrough agreements as peace deals (the way Pakistani leadership touted all deals as the end, though they were only means to the end).
He also stresses that for any peace process to succeed there needs to be political leadership on both sides, and a political momentum.
In Pakistan’s case, while Nawaz Sharif may create a momentum for such an initiative, do we have a legitimate political leadership on the other side? In February 2009, the army had taken Maulana Sufi Muhammad as the key political leader who would neutralize the TTP Swat chief Fazlullah. But it proved to be wrong. Similarly, accepting the terrorists’ demands under the threat of violence would be appeasement.
Powell also makes a case for talks even with terrorists, but does the Ireland model apply to Pakistan’s insurgency? For instance, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) had to carry out talks through a political wing. Does the TTP have a political wing? The IRA narrative was limited to its own territory, but what Pakistan faces is a trans-nationalist ideology – at least as a pretext. There was no state within the state in the UK, but here we have an aberration called FATA – and this very distortion prohibits a lawful approach. Most importantly, can we separate the TTP and other Taliban militants from Al Qaeda? Will the Taliban condemn, or at least dissociate themselves from Al Qaeda’s and Dr Ayman al Zawahiri’s edicts against the Pakistani state and its institutions before engaging in talks? Above all, Ireland didn’t have a complex and acrimonious trilateral rivalry that India, Pakistan and Afghanistan are locked in and which works as oxygen for many non-state actors. Success of any talks will hinge on finding answers to these questions first.
(CRSS Executive Director Imtiaz Gul contributed this to the weekly The Friday Times)
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