The latest scare du jour from Pakistan is news that the Pakistani Taliban finally followed through on their promise to occupy Buner. While this certainly warrants every ounce of alarm we can muster—they need to be stopped, after all—this does not spell the end of the Pakistani state, as way too many part-time South Asia pundits seem to assume. Let us dig into history (with many sources all pulled at the end for readability’s sake).
And not ancient history (though we will, to be sure). In 1994, a man named Sufi Mohammed rose to prominence in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, exerting influence over Dir, Swat, Buner, Malakand, and surrounding areas through his new organization, Tanzim Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi, or “Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law.” The TNSM, as it is now known, is a major subset of the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (and the Swat division of the TNSM is run by our old friend Mullah Fazlullah), which is what everyone is now expending so much energy over.
Back in 1994, when the TNSM was still a burgeoning movement, Benazir Bhutto was still Prime Minister and the ISI was just gearing up its support for the “real” Taliban, Sufi Mohammed made the switch from mostly passive resistance to outright rebellion against the central government—in Bajaur and Dir he ordered his followers to shoot any government personnel they could after government forces had shot into a demonstrating crowd. The TNSM was agitating for the enforcement of their brand of Shari law in these districts—the latest in a long history of requests to impose Shari’a in Swat and the surrounding areas going back at least to 1949.
In fact, Winston Churchill made his name in the British public’s mind by writing about an even earlier battle for Swat’s soul, in 1897. The Mad Mullah, as he was known, helped Churchill form his ardently anti-Muslim ideas which later brought him infamy; the conflict in British India’s Northwest Frontier brought global attention (see the New York Times, for example, above). It culminated in the Seige of Malakand, in which a single, tiny British fort fought off wave after wave of rampaging, angry Pashtuns trying to remove the infidels from their midst.
In fact, the British Indians had constant problems with the Pashtuns along their western border, from the 1840s through to Independence and Partition. This is part of a larger argument about the importance of history in this areas, especially how it can change one’s long-term outlook on any one individual battle or campaign.
And here’s the funny thing: the Pashtuns have never been able to fell the central government. They have tried, and they certainly will try should the Taliban reach the gates of Islamabad. But in stark contest to the people breathing shallowly about the Taliban gaining nuclear weapons, it is important to remember one thing: no matter how much certain segments within the military and ISI say the like or agree with Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar and Nazir and Fazlullah and Mehsud… they know better than to give up their nukes and control of the state.
Baitullah Mehsud, displaying his glorious mane.
The actions unfolding in Swat are worth every ounce of concern and even worry we have; but it is also easy to go overboard in stating the dangers involved—which can lead to overreaction. The results will be unimaginable tragedy for the people the Taliban roll over either way; unfortunately, much of the Taliban’s current strength stems from decisions made in the mid-1990s, by a supposedly liberal female Prime Minister (later continued by an equally corrupt male one). Blaming Musharraf for not going after the militants, and Zadari for not doing enough when they’ve already gained an advantage, is at best identifying only a part of the real problem (and let us not forget that nearly 1,000 Pakistani troops have died in the fighting, in addition to the countless number of innocents). And most importantly of all, it is nothing we haven’t seen before.
Preliminary Reading List for Swat:
David Ditcher (1967). The North-West Frontier of West Pakistan: A Study in Regional Geography. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
C. Christine Fair (2004). Urban Battlefields of South Asia: Lessons Learned from Sri Lanka, India, and Pakistan. Santa Monica: RAND.
Hussein Haqqani (2005). Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Zahid Hussein (2008). Frontline Pakistan: the Struggle with Militant Islam. New York: Columbia University Press.
Geoffrey Moore (1978). “”Just As Good As the Rest”: A British Battalion in the FAQIR of IPI’s WAR. Bedford: Jaycopy.
Major Mohammad Nawaz (1994), FF. The Guardians of the Northwest Frontier. Peshawar: Frontier Corps, North West Frontier Province.
Robert Nichols (2005), ed. Colonial Reports on Pakistan’s Frontier Tribal Areas. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
COL H.R.C. Pettigrew (1965). Frontier Scouts. Sussex: Selsey Press Limited.
Sultan-i-Rome (2009). “Swat: A Critical Analysis.” IPCS Research Papers, New Delhi.
Naveed Ahmad Shinwari (2008). “Understanding FATA: Attitudes Towards Governance, Religion & Society in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.” http://www.understandingfata.org.
Charles Chenevix Trench (1985). The Frontier Scouts. London: Jonathan Cape.
COL G.J. Younghusband (1908). The Story of the Guides. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited.
And more to come…
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Herbal Essence’s “Long Term Relationship” conditioner is my best guess.
Josh, count me among the part-time pundits. What’s going on now in Swat and especially Buner is qualitatively different from the 1990s; they simply are not comparable.
Also, Benazir did not create the Taliban, nor set them on the road to power.
Otherwise, nice history.
Steve, I do not count you among the part-time pundits, since you’ve actually lived there and know what you’re talking about. I didn’t mean to compare Swat and Buner to the 90s, but rather to the several other times radical extremists have emerged from these areas to pose an Islamic challenge to a relatively secular central government. Pakistan still has not yet deployed as many troops as the British did.
Which is where I’m going with that. I only mention the 1990s to note that the figures and issue we’re facing isn’t new or sudden (in fact, that is the point of Hussein’s book, which is quite good).
Lastly, I did not say Benazir created the Taliban. I said the ISI was spurring them on to power in Afghanistan—which is a reasonable thing to say given their role in opening up the arms cache at Spin Boldak that enabled them to retake Kandahar, as well as the subsequent support ISI gave them.
But getting back to whether the Taliban pose an existential threat to the state or not… well, I bet you that you’ll see a much more vigorous response to them now that they’re advancing toward the capital. When it was just crazies in the boondocks, I can see how some particularly cut off elites in Islamabad might have written them off (and in fact, many Pakistanis I’ve spoken to have expressed frustration that the leftists in their cities haven’t seem alarmed by the Taliban’s advance until now).
But really, is this any greater threat than the post-Partition riots, the 1971 war, or any number of vastly more tragic and deadly events in Pakistan’s short history? I don’t see the existential threat yet, which is why I’m saying, yes, let us do what we need to to blunt the Taliban’s advance and roll them back; but all the talk about losing nuclear weapons is just way too premature right now.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 04/24/2009 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.
Josh, I do think this is different in that it challenges the foundation of the country — the groups in society, in law, in politics and the military that have run Pakistan since its founding. It is also different in that it won’t be a simple, self-contained shift of philosophy; the AQ Khan debacle could seem quaint in terms of the ramifications. As I’ve said on my own blog, I steer away from alarmism, but I do see the Taliban advances — and the support they have found in the population and, it seems, in the military — as extremely worrying. It’s not business as usual.
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