Musharraf's control has been dependent on the military and an unlikely alliance with the extreme right wing activists that support the Taliban, which include Pakistan's intelligence community. The problem is that the US war in Afghanistan has taken this ally away. The so-called "Tribal Areas" in Pakistan have evolved since the invasion and have truly become controlled by conservative mullahs who support the Taliban, rather than rightwing patricians owing loyalty to Musharraf. All attempts to intervene in the tribal areas have radicalize the population and solidified control of the mullahs.
Here is a good description of the bleak situation in Pakistan that appears this week in The Nation. Following this is an analysis of options available to Musharraf and the US to attempt to influence the worsening situation in the Tribal Areas.
Pakistan's tribal areas are seven "agencies" piled up against its mountainous border with Afghanistan. Rugged and raw, they are home to 3 million Pashtun tribesmen. For a millennium, they have lived by the Pashtunwali ethic of honor, loyalty and revenge. Some--like North West Frontier Province (NWFP) Governor Ali Mohammed Jan Orakzai, who rules the tribal areas as Musharraf's viceroy--see in such codes a "historical romance of freedom and independence." Others see them as blights of backwardness, poverty and powerlessness. For the past twenty-five years the areas' small but vocal middle class has been demanding their integration into the NWFP and democracy rather than direct rule from Islamabad. Neither has been given.
Change has come in other ways. Following the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the tribal areas became the last front line of the cold war. Powered by US and Saudi money, but orchestrated by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), they became the matrix for national, regional and global Islamist movements, of which Al Qaeda was only the most notorious. Where there had been illiteracy, hundreds of madrassas schooled thousands in the litanies of jihad. Where there had been penury, war economies boomed, driven by currencies of gold, guns and opium. According to historian Fazal-ur-Rahim Marwat, 500,000 young men were socialized in such ways of man, God and dope. Most were Pashtun tribesmen, who eventually morphed into the Taliban. Some were Arabs, including Osama bin Laden.
Pakistan's purpose in planting this "volcano on both sides of the border" was geopolitical, says Marwat. Islamization of the tribal areas was to be the vector through which pro-Pakistan Afghan movements like the Taliban could be supplied, enabling if not a client regime in Kabul then at least an anti-Indian one. Domestically, the production of so many versed in political Islam would serve as a counter to secular parties demanding elections and nationalist Pashtun parties demanding rights. The Pakistani military has long seen India, democracy and regional autonomy as existential threats.
What the army did not foresee was the way Islamization would rupture the tribal order on which its rule rested. As a result of the anti-Soviet insurgency and then the Taliban government in Afghanistan, power in tribal areas slipped away from "political agents" and tribal elders appointed by Islamabad. It fell instead to young clerics or mullahs and their followers, who, like them, were poor, disenfranchised and radical. These are the "Pakistan Taliban." Their ideology is an incendiary mix of Pashtun nationalism, anti-Americanism and a prohibitive, Al Qaeda-influenced Islamism. It is not necessarily anti-Pakistan, but it is beyond the writ of the Pakistani regime, says military analyst Ayesha Siddiqa.
"In the old days--the days of the ISI, the CIA and the mujahedeen--there was command and control, including of warlords who went on to join the Taliban," she says. "But [Taliban leader] Mullah Omar was always autonomous, and so are his followers in the tribal areas. What you call the Pakistan Taliban are young men opposed to Musharraf's policies. They will use arms to bring down the policy. They are out of command and control."
The 9/11 attacks made these dynamics visible. Following the Taliban's ouster from Afghanistan in 2001, Pakistani and Pashtun tribesmen gave sanctuary to 2,000-3,000 Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in South Waziristan.
For the tribesmen, it was a matter of honor: supporting kinsmen against an invader no less alien than the Soviets. For Pakistan it was a matter of insurance, writes journalist and historian Ahmed Rashid. Musharraf "avoided [confronting] the Taliban because he was convinced that the U.S.-led coalition forces would not stay long in Afghanistan. He wanted to maintain the Taliban as a strategic option in case Afghanistan dissolved into civil war and chaos again."
The initial US response to the Taliban's and Al Qaeda's recovery in the tribal areas was disinterest. "We thought, 'If the region's not on fire, there is no need to bring hoses,'" recalls one Western diplomat. "But it became a fire." By 2003 it was clear the Taliban were resurgent in Afghanistan, aided by its bases in South Waziristan, and that senior Al Qaeda leaders, including perhaps bin Laden, were at large in the tribal areas. American commanders told Musharraf that if his army did not go after them, their army would have to. The Pakistani leader submitted. In fifty-six years of independence Pakistani soldiers had never set foot in the Waziristans, part of the trade-off for keeping the tribes loyal. Musharraf told the elders that with conquest would come largesse. He told the army the operation would be a cakewalk.
The army's tribal campaigns lasted nearly three years. With every incursion, civilian death and displacement, the Pakistan Taliban grew stronger. They defended villages, ambushed army patrols, killed pro-government elders and imposed their own brand of "Islamic" law and order. When the army sued for peace with pro-Taliban tribesmen in the Waziristans in 2005 and 2006, it was not because of a new "holistic" strategy for the tribal areas, as sold by Musharraf to Washington. It was because of the army's military and political defeat. Seven hundred soldiers had been killed, many had deserted and a handful of commissioned officers were court-martialed for refusing to serve. The numbers of civilians killed and displaced were in the thousands. "Everyone supported the Taliban when the army came in. It was a people's revolt. Pakistan had broken its promise, and that's a big thing in the tribal areas. You don't break your promise," says Malik Qadir Khan, a tribal leader in North Waziristan.
The agreements consecrated the Pakistan Taliban as a political power, says Afrasiab Khattak, a Pashtun politician. With the military campaigns, "a vacuum was created, and the Taliban filled it. They had money and guns, both of which are handy for achieving leadership in tribal societies. The only thing they lacked was recognition from the state, and this they got from the agreements." And with the withdrawal of the army, the Taliban could territorialize power into rule. A trip to Miramshah, capital of North Waziristan, confirms that it is no longer the police or elders who assume the functions of governance. It is the mullahs and young men with black shaggy hair and rifles slung over their shoulders. "There's no government in Miramshah. The political agent cannot leave his home. It's the Taliban which runs the place," says Bat Shajjar, a local.
IPS News
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's plans to crack down on Karachi's religious schools and the violent sectarian and jihadi groups many of them support has been an outright failure, says a report released Wednesday by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG).
Banned jihadi and sectarian groups, along with the madrasas -- Islamic religious schools -- and mosques which support them, continue to operate freely in Pakistan's capital city and to train and dispatch jihadi fighters to Afghanistan and Indian-administered Kashmir.
The ICG report calls upon the international community to apply pressure on Musharraf to follow through on his commitments to enforce government controls over the madrasas, and to allow open elections in 2007.
Although concerns about madrasa-trained jihadists largely focus on Pakistan's border regions and Afghanistan, violence has threatened the internal stability of Pakistan.
In 2006, Karachi was rocked by three separate suicide bombings, which killed a U.S. diplomat and the leader of a prominent Shia political group, and wiped out the entire leadership of a Sunni militant group that was locked in a struggle for control over mosques with Sunni rival.
"Exploiting Karachi's rapid, unplanned and unregulated urbanisation and its masses of young, disaffected and impoverished citizens, the madrasa sector has grown at an explosive rate over the past two decades," says the report.
The madrasas are accused of capitalising on the climate of lawlessness in Karachi to encourage illegal activities ranging from land encroachment to violent attacks on rival militant groups.
[..]The ICG points to the absence of a single Pakistani agency with the authority to regulate the madrasa sector, specifically its money flows, as a crucial failure in every one of Musharraf's attempts to curb radical Islam in Pakistan.
To date, most plans to counter radical Islam in madrasas have focused on reforming the madrasa system through the curricula, usually in the form of requiring a range of non-religious courses to be taught alongside the existing religious courses.
Instead, the ICG suggests government and donor funding should be shifted towards increased support and reform of the public school system and away from reforming a madrasa system that has consistently refused to cooperate with government policies.
Focusing on removing sectarian, pro-jihad and anti-minority curricula may find a more responsive audience in the public school system, which depends largely on public funds for survival.
However, such a policy would require large sums of time and money to implement. "You can't just take people off the street and say you're a teacher. They need training," said Lieven.
The report recommends that the government of Pakistan adopt an "effective, mandatory, and madrasa-specific registration law", establish a madrasa regulatory authority, stop treating madrasa certificates as the equivalent of degrees issued by boards of education and universities, and take "effective action against all extremist groups and parties".
[..]The ICG hinges their policy prescriptions on the likelihood of free and fair elections marginalising religious parties and bringing greater political influence to national level moderate parties.
However, some analysts don't believe Musharraf has incentives for free and fair elections or that a smoother democratic process would improve the political situation in Pakistan.
"The Pakistani political system runs on patronage, and there isn't enough patronage to go around," said Lieven.
The report does acknowledge that the international community should use foreign aid to support the public school system and make financial support contingent on the holding of free and fair elections in Pakistan.
Although the ICG recommendations focus on the necessity of democratic transparency and open elections, Lieven points to the dire economy in Pakistan as one of the sources of Islamic extremism in Pakistan.
"It is important that anyone who emerges from the Pakistani education system, madras or public school, have jobs to go to," he said. "Unless you can find jobs for people who come out of the system, including the madrasa system, you won't greatly reduce the threat (of extremism)."
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