Afghanistan (42 page)

The Musharraf government first supported the radicals at the Lal Masjid, as previous Pakistani governments had done since the 1970s, and funded them to buy them off, then ignored them until they were entrenched at the mosque and had taken hostages. The government’s first move was to negotiate, but this failed to free the hostages. When Pakistan finally sent in the army, there was a pitched battle resulting in hundreds of casualties, many of them the hostages who had been taken by these radicals. Mullah Abdul Rashid Ghazi, instead of fighting to the end, gave cell phone interviews to the Pakistani news media until stopped by
an army bullet. Many of the radicals were able to escape to the FATA at the close of the siege. The Lal Masjid reopened in October 2007, and an unrepentant Maulana Abdul Aziz was released from prison.
⁴⁰²
The incident demonstrated that the military could not control radical groups that it had previously supported. It also demonstrated that the military would eventually move against Pakistan’s religious radicals if their challenge was too blatant. Whether their actions would be effective was another matter. The Lal Masjid incident meant that the insurgency was no longer literally “peripheral” to Pakistan, but was affecting the core and could pose a real threat to its future as a cohesive state.

The Pakistani army commanders in the FATA became more important than the political agents who had been the representatives of state power there since these positions were established by the British. With the continued rise of insurgent power in 2007, the ISI therefore took the lead and sought to counter them by backing Pushtun rivals to Behtullah Mehsud and other leadership figures. In 2007, as Pakistan attempted to restore the authority of the maliks of the Wazir tribe in Waziristan, the ISI allied itself with South Waziristan militia leader Maulavi Nazir, a Pakistan Taliban leader, despite his armed strength overshadowing the power of the Wazir maliks.
⁴⁰³
As a result, Maulavi Nazir rallied support for both his own personal position in the local power structure and a Pakistani nationalist approach. He advocated fighting not against the Pakistani government but rather in Afghanistan. He also urged his followers to fight transnational terrorist organizations, especially the Uzbeks of the Waziristan-based transnational Islamic Movement of Turkistan (IMT).
⁴⁰⁴
To encourage Maulavi Nazir to fight in Afghanistan and counter the terrorist Uzbeks, ISI reportedly provided him with 150,000 dollars, truckloads of ammunition, and a guarantee of free movement into and out of Afghanistan. In January 2007, Maulavi Nazir and his men fought the Uzbeks, killing at least 250 of them. By working with Maulavi Nazir, the ISI was able to strengthen an alternative leader to Behtullah Mehsud, counter the Uzbeks who had helped enable the rise of the insurgency in Waziristan, and directed his fighting against targets in Afghanistan rather than Pakistan. The ISI also worked with Haji Namdar, the biggest recruiter of warriors in the FATA’s Khyber Agency,
to fuel the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan.
⁴⁰⁵
As a result of ISI support, he helped, through a mixture of persuasion, bribery, and force, to keep open in 2007 the coalition supply lines from Karachi to Kabul that ran through the Khyber Pass.

The army also moved, unsuccessfully, against TNSM insurgents in Swat in 2007. In its February 2008 offensive into Southern Waziristan, the army learned from its 2004 experience and demonstrated better tactics, killing over 1,000 TTP and Uzbek fighting men, but still failed to dislodge Behtullah Mehsud’s control of the area through military action.
⁴⁰⁶

The spread of the insurgency through the FATA made the NWFP appear the next target in 2008.
⁴⁰⁷
A secular ANP government was elected in the NWFP in the February 2008 elections, replacing one controlled by the MMA. The election was marked by a low level of voter turnout reflecting the security threat and disenchantment with Pakistan’s politicians. Led by ethnic Pushtuns and elected by popular vote, the ANP could challenge the insurgents’ nationalist appeal in NWFP. The ANP government, unlike the national government and the military, was pro-Karzai, pro-Kabul, pan-Pushtun, anti-Durand Line. The unanswered question was whether the NWFP government has suffered the same de-legitimation as has most Pushtun-related secular authority in Afghanistan and throughout Pakistan. With access to the media, the ANP could counter the “battle of ideas” that the insurgents and their supporters had waged so successfully over the years. Instead, the NWFP government limited these tactics to the areas that were already “secure.” Despite widespread popular dislike of the insurgents, their brutality and the lack of effective engagement by the ethnic Pushtuns opposed to them prevented the emergence of an effective grassroots movement against the insurgents in most of the NWFP.

The insurgent offensive in the NWFP opened with the ambush and murder in the Khyber Agency in May 2008 of a major tribal elder with strong links to the ANP, Ahmad Khan Kukikhel.
⁴⁰⁸
Within months, insurgents were able to threaten Peshawar, the provincial capital of the NWFP. Insurgent roadblocks were in place within an hour’s drive of the city, controlling access to the countryside. The ANP-led government in
Peshawar received little support from the Pakistani national government or the military, which had long-standing hostility toward the ANP as potentially divisive ethnic nationalists.

Most of the Pakistani military action in NWFP was in Swat.
⁴⁰⁹
There had been a ceasefire agreement with the insurgents in Swat negotiated in April 2007, but this had effectively broken down by July, when Pakistani troops started to be deployed in the area.
⁴¹⁰
When the Pakistani military moved against the TNSM insurgents in the Swat valley in November 2007, they avoided the army’s firepower not by fleeing over the Durand Line into “lawless” Afghanistan, but rather deeper into Pakistan, where they were able to regroup.
⁴¹¹
This resulted in negotiations with the TNSM by the NWFP government. It appears that the initial goal was, as in the peace deals negotiated by the military in previous years, that the insurgents would get a free hand in the direction of Afghanistan in return for peace in Pakistan. This mindset had been explicitly stated by NWFP governor Owari Ghani in talks with US military officials in May 2008: “Pakistan will take care of its own problems. You take care of Afghanistan on your side.”
⁴¹²
But as the negotiations went through several stages in 2007–08, it became apparent that the TNSM was less interested in fighting in Afghanistan than consolidating its position to support a decisive expansion of its power in Pakistan.

The military next targeted the TNSM’s new foothold in the Bajaur agency of the FATA, between Swat and Afghanistan. Insurgents under Qazi Zia Rahman had displaced pro-government local tribesmen in 2008. In August 2008, the military launched a major offensive with a reinforced division-sized force that was supported by heavy artillery and F-16 fighters using precision-guided munitions. It was uncertain whether this firepower killed many insurgents, but there was no doubt that over 500,000 internal refugees were created by the offensive, and the army’s inability to help them further weakened the already fragile social fabric. But the inability to replace the insurgent control of Bajaur with effective governance led to the TNSM returning to much of that agency as early as spring 2009.
⁴¹³

The strength of the insurgents allowed them to turn their attention on the supply lines for the US-led coalition that runs from the port of
Karachi in Pakistan into Afghanistan. In June 2008 alone, 44 trucks with 220,000 gallons of fuel were lost on that route in Pakistan to attacks or other events.
⁴¹⁴
The insurgents let most of the supply trucks pass, enriching themselves by bribes and protection payments. To many in Pakistan, that the insurgents were funding themselves through money originating with the US and coalition seemed proof that the Western presence in Afghanistan was not about reconstructing and stabilizing that country but had its real goal as destabilizing Pakistan, which threatened the “Global War on Islam” seen as being waged by the US, India, and Israel.

The 2008 food and energy crises further increased the pressure on the state, in the wake of the fighting and the huge numbers of internal refugees. In the 2008 election, economic issues proved to be a higher concern among the voters than even security concerns. The insurgents took advantage of this to supply basic needs, such as cooking oil, to the local population.

Within months, the insurgents returned to Swat and some 12,000 troops were unable to prevail over 3,000 insurgents in fighting that resumed in July 2008.
⁴¹⁵
The military began to play an increasing role in non-military action. In 2008, the army claim to have built some 2,000 km of roads, plus schools and wells to reduce the insurgents’ appeal. But there was still widespread hardship and disruption to the local population that the insurgents were often quick to identify.

Pakistan Fights, 2008—09

Even after the Lal Masjid incident, the civilian government elected in Pakistan in 2008 was still slow to treat the insurgency on its territory as an existential threat. The Pakistani military was slower still to take appropriate action. In 2009, the military pulled troops from counter-insurgency missions over to the Indian border after the Mumbai terrorist attacks raised fears of a retaliatory strike. Pakistani elites and grassroots alike were unwilling to accept Islamic radicals as a threat to Pakistan, as shown by widespread sentiment blaming India for the terrorist attack on the Sri Lanka cricket team in Lahore. As late as April 2009, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani had told the parliament that the insurgents posed no threat to the nation’s integrity, while Interior Minister Rahman Malik identified
the real threat to Pakistan as aggression from Afghanistan, India, and Russia.
⁴¹⁶
This was stated despite the fact that the insurgents, by that time, controlled an estimated ten percent of Pakistan’s entire surface area, including most of the FATA, and were gaining ground.

Nor was there an immediate response to the de facto insurgent seizure of Swat by the resurgent TNSM that led to the ceasefire agreement on 16 February 2009 with the NWFP provincial government.
⁴¹⁷
In the months before the cease-fire, the TNSM had increased their control over much of Swat, ending girls’ education and polio vaccinations.
⁴¹⁸
The ceasefire agreement, providing for Swat to be governed under Sharia rather than the laws of Pakistan, effectively left the insurgents in control. This ceasefire agreement was endorsed by the parliament. President Asif Ali Zardari signed the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation (NAR), which allowed Swat to be governed under Sharia law and called for the creation of a new Islamic appeals court. The NWFP government failed to disarm the insurgents, who then spread into surrounding districts, threatening them. After the army had withdrawn again, as in 2007, without reestablishing effective civil governance, TNSM radio broadcasts threatened any who resisted their reassertion of authority over Swat with dire punishments. As a result, some 700 of the 1,700 Frontier Constabulary and Frontier Police in Swat deserted, and the others were reluctant to oppose the TNSM’s return to power.
⁴¹⁹
By April 2009, the insurgents has re-occupied much of Swat.

What finally spurred the military to action in 2009 was that after the TNSM-led insurgents established their control over much of Swat, they advanced on Buner, Dir, and other districts of the NWFP, failed to disarm, and continued inflammatory FM radio broadcasts, all in express violation of the ceasefire terms. They also insisted that decisions of their Sharia courts established in Swat could not be appealed to Pakistani courts, as provided for under the ceasefire agreement. Beatings, floggings, and beheadings were widespread in the insurgent-controlled areas. The insurgent advance raised inter-ethnic tensions in Karachi and threatened the Punjab. Their leader, Sufi Shah Mahmoud, denounced all “infidel institutions” in Pakistan that he intended to sweep away with
his Islamic revolution. This included civil society, the legal system, and, of course, the military.

A two-division army operation to reoccupy Swat started in May 2009, opposing up to 70–80,000 insurgents. Hundreds of thousands of refugees were displaced by the fighting and received little effective aid from the national or NWFP governments and were essentially fodder for the insurgents.
⁴²⁰
But the insurgents’ brutal reign in Swat and their threat to Pakistan’s existence prevented them from receiving additional support from the local population. An estimated 2,000 insurgents and over 300 Pakistani military personnel were killed. In 2009, the military put a greater emphasis on the non-military actions of counter-insurgency. The Pakistan military, as it took back control over Swat in 2009, emphasized that it was there to hold the area and not just clear away the insurgents temporarily. It demonstrated this new policy by implementing relief efforts for the refugees that the civilian government was unable to organize due to lack of resources and capability. Restoring effective governance to replace the rough Sharia-based justice administered by the Pakistani insurgents has not yet occurred in those areas where the military has taken back territory, in effect leaving the same political vacuum that hurt them before. Once the army reoccupied Swat, they demonstrated the change in the Pakistani military’s perception of the insurgents in Swat by their increased use of death-squad extrajudicial killings to remove the clandestine network of insurgent sympathizers.
⁴²¹
The Pakistani military, convinced of the weakness of their country’s justice system, sees these murderous methods as part of effective counter-insurgency.
⁴²²

Countering the Insurgency in Waziristan, 2009—10

The army, while it had tried to negotiate with insurgents to provide an improved security situation in the run-up to the Pakistani election in February 2008, has been reluctant to carry out such negotiations since then, following the insurgents’ repeated reneging on agreements. By 2009, negotiations were no longer the Pakistan government’s tactics of choice in dealing with the Pakistani insurgency. Rather, they would support rivals to the insurgent leaders and launch military offensives against those
leaders whose actions threatened Pakistan outside Pushtun areas. Part of the Pakistani military approach in 2009 was apparently to focus the Pakistani insurgents’ efforts inside Afghanistan. Following their reoccupation of Swat, the Pakistan military turned their focus toward North and South Waziristan where the TTP controlled the two agencies. The TTP based there had, like the TNSM, threatened Pakistani state power outside their own area. Behtullah Mehsud’s claims of responsibility for the terrorist attack on a police training facility near Lahore in April 2009 underlined this.