Don’t write the Taliban off just yet
Although the Taliban is on the back foot in Pakistan, the war is far from over and thousands of civilians have been left homeless
oMustafa Qadri
oguardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 June 2009 09.30 BST
The Taliban have suffered their heaviest defeat in Pakistan since first erupting into open insurgency in 2003. Before May, the loose network of warlords that have invoked the Taliban franchise here have expanded into large swaths of Pakistan’s Pakhtun tribal areas. Prior to current events, some estimates placed the Taliban in 11% of Pakistan, almost all of that being in the North-West Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas that are presently the centre of military operations by Pakistan and the US.
Now, finally, the Taliban are on the back foot in this country. According to Pakistan’s secretary of defence, “only five to 10% of the job is remaining“. The massive army operations in Swat, vocally praised and likely orchestrated by the US from the very beginning, have been devastating for the insurgency.
Many rank-and-file members of the insurgency have already met their maker. The army says it has killed 1,217 “miscreants”, while 81 soldiers have “embraced martyrdom”. These figures are difficult to verify. Much like its counterparts in Sri Lanka, Israel in Gaza and the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pakistan army has strictly prohibited journalists from entering the combat zones. Like those other armies, there are strong indications that its assaults have been heavily reliant on distant bombardments that have exacerbated civilian deaths. Quiet, off-the-record murmurs from the army’s top brass put the civilian casualty rate at 80%.
Mingora, the main city of the Swat valley and a Taliban stronghold during the fighting, was finally retaken by the army this week. As the townsfolk entered the once enchanted capital of this region they were confronted by ghastly scenes of death and devastation.
It is estimated that the battle for Swat has made close to two million homeless, although the figure alone belies the calamitous experiences of mostly rural, peaceful people uprooted from a once quiet, temperate princely state. “I want to return to paradise,” said one Mingora resident I met recently in Peshawar with a confident if still stoic smile. He was, of course, referring to the earthly paradise of the lower Himalayas, not the kind eulogised in Taliban audio cassettes – the only type of music the movement is happy to see sold in the bazaars of Pakistan.
Spare a thought then for those who managed to survive Taliban rule and army bombardments. Although most fled, many were trapped in the conflict zones. Once liberated, they spoke of their harrowing experiences without food, water or electricity.
Local social workers who recently returned to Swat told me many were forced to eat leaves and grass, such is the dire lack of supplies. The conflict has been a double blow for the largely agrarian communities here because it has occurred at the height of the harvesting season when the valley’s famous peach, strawberry and other harvests were about to commence.
For top Taliban commanders at least there were more provisions. A recently captured command bunker unearthed in Swat revealed copious food supplies along with sophisticated communications equipment and a fine selection of Afghan carpets.
Many in Pakistan are wondering if key leaders like Maulanas Fazlullah – the man made infamous by his incendiary radio broadcasts threatening violence on those, like school girls, who disobeyed his edicts – and Shah Dawran escaped on a magic carpet. There has been no word on either man’s capture. Given the army’s very public boasts about the success of its operations, it is unlikely to be holding back on announcing their capture.
The most obvious explanation for the apparent disappearance of key leaders is that, like so many guerrilla commanders, they are lying low or have already been blown into a million pieces making ready identification impossible. The Taliban have a practice of quickly burying their dead and hiding the corpses of killed commanders. This makes the job of identifying their casualties even more difficult.
Another possibility, increasingly mooted by long-term observers of the army’s relationship with the Taliban and other militants, is that the generals have decided not to eliminate key Taliban leaders for fear of losing a long-term military asset. As the respected Pakistani journalist Zahid Hussain noted, why didn’t authorities arrest senior local Taliban leaders at a very public meeting in Mingora in April?
Whether or not the army will continue its love affair with the Taliban, it is clear that the movement is not sitting quietly. Large pockets of insurgents remain in Swat and the surrounding areas. They have already bombed several army posts in Dera Ismail Khan, Kohat and Waziristan over the past two days alone, far to the south from Swat. On Thursday security forces rescued 80 boys and staff kidnapped by the Taliban a day earlier as they left a cadet college in North Waziristan.
The US has its own cadets to take care of. On Saturday three planes loaded with US counter-insurgency “trainers” landed at Peshawar airport. Hoping to meet some of them, I ventured to Peshawar’s American Club, a small watering hole built by the US government for its staff in the 1980s that is arguably the most heavily guarded pub on the planet. But there were no grunts, only privately contractors, one of whom quietly insisted that “we should just get the fuck out of here”.
The US is doing quite the opposite, as evidenced by the massive diplomatic complexes it is building in Kabul and Islamabad – cities where, much like previous colonial times, foreigners and locals rarely mingle.
The war with the Taliban is far from over in Pakistan. No, it has just begun. From here, expect an escalation of army operations and US missile strikes. The Taliban can be expected to escalate their attacks too. How and where remains to be seen.
(Originally published at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/04/taliban-pakistan)