Public Unites Against Taliban in Pakistan
Mustafa Qadri | 16 Jul 2009
KARACHI, Pakistan — There has been a perceptible shift in the battle against militancy in Pakistan. The massive army operations that recently concluded in the Swat valley, the largest ever conducted by Pakistan against the Taliban, are but one facet of it. For the first time, the government is also winning the propaganda war.
Ordinary citizens and political parties from across the spectrum — including religious ones — have rallied around the army. At a series of government-organized religious conferences in May, scholars denounced the Taliban as a perversion of Islamic teachings.
While stopping short of apologizing for their role in stoking the Taliban in the past, mainstream religious parties have had to tailor their rhetoric to reflect the change in popular sentiment. Where once parties like Jamaat-e-Islami would all but openly support the Taliban, they have now been forced to denounce the current spate of suicide bombings and other insurgent attacks against the army, government institutions and ordinary citizens as the work of “enemies of Pakistan” and Islam.
As part of its effort to rally its troops and the public, the Pakistan army has even set up a YouTube channel juxtaposing pop music with images of its soldiers engaged in operations against the Taliban. The nation’s satellite television channels are also broadcasting music videos decrying the spiraling violence.
Other efforts to shape public opinion include “Yeh hum naheen (This Is Not Us),” a movement set up by a number of Pakistani pop stars to combat terrorism and extremist interpretations of Islam, such as those preached by the Taliban and other groups.
It hasn’t always been this way.
Ever since the Taliban launched its insurgency against the Pakistan state in 2003, the population has oscillated between outright denial of its existence and resentment towards army operations seen as pitting countrymen against countrymen for the sake of foreign powers — especially the United States. Many have questioned whether it is really the Taliban that is committing atrocities in Pakistan, like the massive suicide bombing of the Marriot Hotel in September last year, or the destruction of hundreds of girls schools in the former resort area of Swat.
Given the high-stakes great-power politics of this region — Pakistan is a vital crossroads between Central and South Asia and the Middle East — conspiracy theories in the country abound. Yet ordinary Pakistanis remain largely ignorant of the extent to which their own army has for decades supported the Taliban and other militant groups, an issue that remains the “great white elephant” of Pakistani politics. That ignorance has led many to suspect an Indian, American or even Israeli hand in the almost-daily insurgent attacks mounted across the country — and especially in the North West Frontier Province that sits along Pakistan’s largely unguarded border with Afghanistan.
Yet even that ignorance has slowly started to be challenged. There has been no more dramatic example of this than President Asif Ali Zardari’s admission last week that militancy had been “created and nurtured” by the state with the help of the international community in the 1980s.
For years, there have been a minority of commentators and citizens, especially among the liberal educated elite, that have warned of the threats posed to Pakistan by extremism. Their voices have in recent months been joined by the broader community and politicians. What has caused this significant shift in perceptions? The answer lies in the Taliban itself.
There was country-wide support for the government when, in February, it announced a peace deal with the Taliban in the Swat valley, via a local cleric sympathetic to the movement. But when the Taliban continued its violent insurgency in neighboring districts like Buner and Bajaur, and when its spokesmen publicly justified the violent execution of those, like policemen and dancers, considered enemies of Islam, the public began to wake up to the threat.
There has been widespread outrage over Taliban attacks on fellow Muslims, such as the frequent bombing of mosques that have killed hundreds in the last three years alone. When a video of Taliban members flogging a young woman for allegedly eloping with a man went viral, ordinary Pakistanis were shocked into the realization that the Taliban did not reflect their experience of Islam.
Of course, even with the welcome shift in opinion, the situation remains dire in Pakistan.
The conflict has been a humanitarian disaster for the now 3.5 million Pakistanis displaced since last August, when the army commenced its latest major offensives. From close to the border with Afghanistan at Peshawar to the foothills above Islamabad, in Mardan and Swabi, a sea of human grief has been streaming down since the army started a massive, often indiscriminate bombing campaign on May 8.
The U.N. believes the mass exodus of civilians is the greatest since the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and possibly even since the bloody partition of the subcontinent in August 1947. Few preparations were undertaken before the army started firing its mortars, although relief efforts from the government and the private sector have now begun in earnest. Welfare and political organizations, both secular and religious, have been involved in the massive relief effort, while appeals for donations have proliferated on shop windows and on television.
Those crammed into the squalid conditions of the displaced persons camps of the North West Frontier Province all speak of the need for relief and support from the government. A coherent policy is needed to provide humanitarian, economic and social rehabilitation to the displaced. Otherwise, as with previous army excursions into Taliban strongholds over the past four years, militancy will return, fueled by the unmet grievances of frustrated civilians. Without a coherent strategy, even the current wellspring of popular support will dry up.
Mustafa Qadri is Middle East and South Asia correspondent for The Diplomat and newmatilda.com. He also writes a weekly column on Pakistan for The Guardian newspaper’s Web site.
[Originally published at: http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=4082]