Silence On The Maulana FM

After three days of stiff resistance by thefollowers of Mulla Fazlullah, the Amir of theTehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), who beat back the attempts ofPakistani para-military forces to capture the headquarters of the mullah at ImamDheri in the Swat district of the Malakand Division in the North-West FrontierProvince (NWFP) of Pakistan, there has been a lull since the early hours of themorning of October 29, 2007. There has been an informal cease-fire to enable thetwo sides to collect their dead and injured. It is not known who initiated theceasefire--the government or the TNSM.

The para-military forces--mainly from theFrontier Constabulary--called for helicopter strikes on the jihadi hide-outs inorder to break their resistance. They also used heavy artillery.  Most ofthe fighting centred round the small town of Mingora, where the jihadis hadblown up a truck on October 25, 2007, killing 20 FC members and some civilians. Earlier, the para-military forces had claimed that they had reached Imam Dheri,which is 15 KMs from Mingora, and surrounded the headquarters of Fazlullah.Subsequent reports showed that this was not so. The jihadi resistance hadprevented the para-military forces from advancing towards Imam Dheri.

Ten jihadis were killed in the helicopterstrikes, but the panic caused by them led to a large exodus of refugees towardssafe areas. The jihadis claimed to have captured 30 para-military personnel andthreatened to have them killed if the para-military forces did not stop theiroperations. They also managed to blow up electricity transmission lines in theadjoining areas plunging them in darkness. Unidentified elements firedrockets at the Peshawar airport on the night of October 27, 2007, but they didnot cause any damage. It is not, however, known whether this incident wasconnected with the fighting in the Swat District.

The NWFP was under the rule of a coalition of sixIslamic fundamentalist parties called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), who hadwon the elections of 2002. This government recently resigned during the crisisover the re-election of Gen. Pervez Musharraf as the President while continuingto hold office as the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS). The local Assembly wasalso dissolved. A care-taker government headed by a retired public servant hastaken over. Fresh elections are expected in January next year. Till then, theprovince would be directly under the administration of the federal government inIslamabad. Taking advantage of this window of opportunity for operations againstthe pro-Taliban and pro-Al-Qaeda jihadis, who had set up virtually autonomousenclaves in areas of the province adjoining South and North Waziristan with thecomplicity of the MMA coalition, Musharraf has embarked on a drive to crush thembefore the elections. His operation has run into serious difficulties. Thefundamentalist parties such as the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam Pakistan of MaulanaFazlur Rahman, which have links with the TNSM and the Neo Taliban, have accusedthe General of provoking a crisis situation in order to use it as a pretext forimposing a state of emergency and postponing the elections.

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd),Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director,Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.