The Sledgehammer In Swat

During his address to the nation after declaring martial lawon November 3, 2007, President and (now retired) General Pervez Musharraf hadmentioned that terrorism and Islamist extremism had reached their peak, and thatincidents of suicide attacks throughout Pakistan had increased manifold.However, Musharraf, now a civilian President, has, since then, used hisEmergency powers primarily to imprison political opponents, civil societyactivists and media personnel. While his beleaguered regime concentrates itsenergy on clinging to power, the diffusion of turmoil across the length andbreadth of the country and the intensification of multiple insurgencies shows nosigns of abating. In fact, violence has actually worsened since the impositionof Emergency rule. More than 728 persons, including 341 militants and 293civilians and 94 security force (SF) personnel, have died in November, making itthe most lethal month in terms of fatalities not only in 2007, but since 2001.More than half of these fatalities have been inflicted in the Swat District ofthe North West Frontier Province (NWFP). In fact, more than 624 people have diedin the Swat District in 2007 in at least 134 incidents. Most of the victims ofviolence in Swat during in November 2007, the most lethal month, have been dueto the indiscriminate strafing of villages by the Pakistan Army's helicoptergunships. (Significantly, the actual fatalities may be significantly higher, asinformation flows and reportage in the region are severely restricted).

While President Musharraf labours to manage the fallout ofhis 'second coup', events in the Swat and the adjoining Shangla District of theNWFP, the centre of most of the current violence, are entirely out of Islamabad'scontrol. In fact, the situation reflects a clear failure of Musharraf'scounter-insurgency strategy and provides a disturbing picture of the magnitudeof Pakistan's slide into anarchy. In more ways than one, the state of play inSwat is a reflection of the crisis that afflicts Pakistan. While the march ofradical Islam has been rapid and relatively unopposed, despite claims to thecontrary, submissiveness and compliance has marked the character of thePakistani state's responses.

On November 29, 2007, military authorities said they hadevicted militants from most of the troubled areas in the Swat Valley while allthe displaced Government officials returned to their jobs in Shangla Districtafter the retreat of Maulana Fazlullah-led militants of theTehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) from their positions in theDistrict Headquarters of Alpuri. Major Amjad Iqbal, the military spokesman inMingora (Swat), told reporters that the majority of militants were either killedor had escaped to the mountains after the SFs targeted them in their hideouts.He said 230 militants had so far been killed in clashes with the SFs in the Swatand Shangla Districts. The military's declaration of 'victory' is far from final--in an insurgency, holding or losing ground is of little significance, andsources indicate that the violence has merely shifted, with the militantstactically dispersed into the hills. Maulana Muhammad Alam, a close aide ofMaulana Fazlullah, made a speech from his mobile FM radio in which he deniedthat the militants had left their positions and claimed that the real battleagainst the SFs had now begun, and would continue indefinitely. And at around11:45 pm on November 27, through his FM radio channel, Fazlullah himselfdirected his armed followers to stop fighting and shift to safer places and waitfor his other 'important messages' regarding the future line of action.

There has, nevertheless, been some reduction in the militants'capacities. Reports on November 27 indicated that, after suffering 'huge losses',the militants in Swat vacated all the seized Police Stations and otherGovernment buildings and decided to go underground, while the Government closeddown all the FM radio channels in the District, including the one run byFazlullah. The military claimed that they had captured two strategic mountainpositions and key routes to Imam Dehri in the Swat Valley. Troops reportedlycaptured the key positions of Najia Top and Usmani Sar after shelling the ImamDehri, Koza Banda and Bara Banda areas. On November 25, an unnamed commander ofthe Khan Khitab alias Baba group, which controlled the Matta sub-division inSwat, was reportedly killed.

With an area of approximately 1,772 square kilometres, theSwat District has a population of 1.5 million (according to the last census in1998). It is a place of great natural beauty, with "high mountains, greenmeadows, and clear lakes" and was, till recently, a popular tourist destination.Located just about 160 kilometres from the national capital, Islamabad, five ofthe Districts' seven Sub-districts had fallen into the control of Islamistextremists.

Unsurprisingly, SF personnel, administrators loyal toIslamabad, pro-Government tribal leaders and journalists, have been the obvioustargets of the rising extremist violence. The choice of targets has alsoexpanded to include music and video shops, barber shops, internet centres, NGOs,girls' schools, and cultural targets such as ancient images of the Buddha.According to the TNSM, all of these are 'un-Islamic'.

With little evidence of state capacities to control orprotect, the common people of Swat have been extraordinarily vulnerable. Indeed,thousands fled their villages in the Kabal sub-division and other areas of Swatafter announcements were made by SFs asking them to leave the area, as the Armywas set to launch a massive operation against what it called terrorists hidingthere. Safdar Sial and Aqeel Yusafzai reported that about 60 per cent of the 1.5million inhabitants have left the area. Unnamed officials confirmed, on November19, that at least 500,000 people had fled the region. A majority of them hadreportedly shifted to the Malakand Agency, Mardan, Charsadda, Nowshera, Peshawarand Islamabad. A majority of villagers in areas like Sangota, Faza Gat,Hayatabad, Koza and Bara Bandai, Nangolai, Kanju, Shakar Dara, Sher Palam,Behrain, Mianadam, Oshu, Gabral, Shawar and Chakrial have also reportedlyabandoned their homes. On their part, the militants are said to have madeannouncements asking people not to leave their homes as they had arranged forsuicide bombers to attack the SFs, if the latter came out of their bases toattack the militants.

The supply of food and daily utilities has reportedly beendisrupted to the Swat, Upper Dir, Lower Dir and Chitral Districts and theMalakand Agency because the main approach road, the Mardan-Malakand Road, hadbeen blocked to all kinds of vehicular traffic since November 24. Cellular-phoneservices have been jammed while the landline telephone network has collapsed inthe Shangla, Swat and Battagram Districts. Further, a large number of people who"wanted to move to safer areas from Swat, were reportedly stranded on theroadside, in fields and gas stations and other places on the Mingora-Malakandroad. The government has been slow to set up camps for the displaced people atBarikot in Swat and far away in Risalpur in the Nowshera District."

Administrative control in Swat has for long shifted into thehands of the forces of radical Islam led by the TNSM. More importantly, the "tribalsystem of political administration is being dismantled, both by the presence ofthe Army and by terrorist violence orchestrated by groups and individuals linkedto the Taliban-al Qaeda."Taliban-linked operatives have reportedly opened officesand set up check-posts at various places in the District. On October 9,Fazlullah had announced the formation of a 'volunteer force' to "control law andorder and traffic problems" in the Matta Sub-division. He said that a Sharia courthad already been set up in his native Imam Dehri village. The volunteer forcecalled 'Shaheen Commandos', he disclosed, had started patrolling the area andmarched through the Matta and Kabal towns.

A demoralised Police force is clearly no longer able tomaintain law and order in the District. Demoralisation is now also rampant amongthe military, and this has been enormously augmented by the suicide attacks anddemonstrative brutality of the Islamist militants. Two days after a suicidebomber targeted a vehicle carrying Frontier Constabulary personnel at NawanKilli on October 25 and killed 18 soldiers and two civilians, the heads of twoFrontier Constabulary personnel were paraded through the streets of Mattavillage near Saidu Sharif, the capital of Swat. Militants also publicly executedtwo SF personnel and seven civilians in the Swat District on October 26-27,taking the total such killings to 13. Maulana Sirajuddin, spokesman for the pro-Talibancleric Maulana Fazlullah, confirmed that they had conducted the beheadings.There have been a significant number of surrenders by Army and Paramilitarypersonnel. On November 2, TNSM militants paraded 48 SF personnel before themedia in Swat. The SF personnel had surrendered during a week of fierce clashes.One unnamed soldier is reported to have stated, "The militants told us that wewould not be harmed if we surrender. If not, then the entire population from thevillage below will climb up the hill and may kill you." The soldierssubsequently were given PKR 500 each before being released. One of the soldierssaid that they do not want to fight with their Muslim brothers who are fightingfor the implementation of Sharia.

Further, out of the 21 suicide attacks in the NWFP in 2007,four have occurred in Swat:

October 25: Eighteen soldiers and two civilians died and 35others, including nine civilians, were injured in a bomb blast aimed at avehicle carrying Frontier Constabulary personnel at Nawan Killi.

August 3: A suicide blast targeting the family of aGovernment official killed two persons and injured six members of the family inthe Gora village.

July 15: At least 13 SF personnel and six civilians,including three children, were killed and more than 50 people sustained injuriesat Matta, when two suicide bombers rammed two cars packed with explosives intoan Army convoy early in the morning.

July 12: A suicide bomber killed three police personnel bydetonating explosives wrapped around his waist in the Swat District. The suicideattack came moments after a military convoy passed through the area. Unconfirmedreports said that there were two suicide bombers.

The social sphere has for long been the focus of radicalIslam in Pakistan. The Taliban was a state of mind even before it became aregime in Afghanistan. In a mirrored evolution, moral policing and social edictsare now an accepted reality in Swat: there is a total ban on music, Internet andCD shops. Maulana Fazlullah has altered names of places that he considersun-Islamic. Schools in the District, especially for girls, have been shut down.Radical clerics command men to grow beards and veil their women, cameras arebanned, and people are being forced to stop watching television or listening tomusic. Since the onset of clashes in October, all schools have closed down and apolio vaccination campaign for children has been abandoned

Evoking disturbing memories of the appalling destruction ofthe centuries-old Buddha statues by the Taliban in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, inMarch 2001, Fazlullah's militant brigade in Swat twice attempted to demolish a 7^thcentury Buddha statue in the Jihanabad village in September 2007. The militantsbelieve such statues are 'symbols of evil.'

According to the NWFP Home Secretary Badshah Gul Wazir,Maulana Fazlullah and his 4,500 armed volunteers had set up a 'parallelgovernment' in Swat. Wazir also disclosed that foreign militants and members ofoutlawed groups were being sheltered in the troubled area. The TNSM, one of thefive outfits proscribed by Musharraf on January 12, 2002, was formed in 1992with the objective of a militant enforcement of Sharia. Ideologically, itis committed to transforming Pakistan into a Taliban-style state. In an August1998-speech in Peshawar, Maulana Sufi Mohammed reportedly declared that thoseopposing the imposition of Sharia were wajib-ul-qatl (worthy of death).

While most of the violence and subversion in Swat is beingorchestrated by the TNSM, sources indicate that at least some of the militantskilled in November were from the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) headed by Maulana MasoodAzhar. In a speech he made at the Tablighi Jamaat meeting in Raiwind near Lahoreon November 12, Masood Azhar had declared: "Whatever Mullah Fazalullah is doingin Swat is just according to Islam. He is teaching the infidels a good lesson--the infidel Pak Army." There are also reports that JeM's splinter group, theJamaat-ul-Furqan and al Qaeda-linked militants are also supporting the TNSM.Militants of the Jamaat-ul-Furqan had set up check-posts on the main road inShakkardarra and had taken positions on hills during the recent clashes with theArmy and Paramilitary Forces, according to Safdar Sial and Aqeel Yusafzai.

Despite the recent setbacks, the TNSM militants haveconsiderable support on the ground. Apart from the generic attraction thatradical Islam now draws across Pakistan, the TNSM has been able to galvaniselarge sections of the Swat populace in the immediate past over the Lal Masjid(Red Mosque) issue. Since many of the Lal Masjid students were from Swat, themilitary assault on the mosque in Islamabad generated sympathy for Fazlullah andhis band of jihadis. While he had extended wholesome support to the LalMasjid clerics, Abdul Rashid Ghazi and Maulana Abdul Aziz, a majority of therallies and anti-Musharraf demonstrations to protest the assault on Lal Masjidwere held in Swat. A day after the military assault on Lal Masjid on July 3,2007, four civilians were killed and two Police personnel were wounded in a bombblast that targeted a Police vehicle in the Swat District. One Policeman waskilled and four others injured during a rocket attack on a Police Station in theMata area of Swat District on July 4. The blast followed calls on a privateIslamist FM radio station in the area for launching a jihad against theGovernment in retaliation for the confrontation in Lal Masjid in Islamabad. NWFPPolice Chief, Sharif Virk, blamed Maulana Fazlullah for both these attacks.Fazlullah, in broadcasts on his FM channel on July 3 and 4, asked his supportersto take up arms against the Government to avenge the action taken against LalMasjid and carry out suicide attacks.

One of Fazlullah's core means for his propaganda campaigns isthe FM radio. Maulana Fazlullah is also known as Maulana Radio for the 'illegal'FM radio stations that he operates to instigate an armed uprising, urging peopleto "prepare for jihad". In fact, there are at least 25 illegal FM channelsoperating in Swat District. These are being run by clerics affiliated to theTNSM, Tablighi Jamaat, Jamaat-e-Islami and the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (FazlurRehman faction). Some of the clerics running these FM stations reportedly are:Maulana Ahmed Ali Shah in Bara Bandai, Maulana Mohammad Alam in Fatehpur,Maulana Ali Mohammad in Kota Barikot, Maulana Khair Mohammad in Shamozo, MaulanaMohammad Rehan in Parlai, Maulana Safiullah in Matta, Maulana Bakht Ali inQambar, Mohammad Essa in Sharifabad, Maulana Mohammad Alam in Benori Madyan andMaulana Mohammad Fahim in Drushkhela. These radio stations, which can cover anarea of up to four to five kilometres, cost a mere PKR 5,000 to set up.

It was on July 13, 2007, that Gen. Musharraf approved a planfor the immediate deployment of paramilitary forces in the Swat Valley to crushthe militancy. He also directed armed forces personnel not to wear theiruniforms in public in the NWFP for fear of a backlash from the Lal Masjidoperation. He had then stated that the Federal security agencies would executeand monitor all military operations in the NWFP and the NWFP Government wouldonly assist them. And a meeting presided over by President Musharraf on July 20had approved 'an all-encompassing strategy' to combat terrorism, extremism andgrowing militancy in the NWFP. More than five months after the military movedinto Swat, there is no indication of any order being restored.

Swat is crucial from the point of view of a larger front thatal Qaeda is in the process of creating in Pakistan. Daily Times reportedon November 27 that some Punjabi veterans of the Kashmir jihad nowfighting on the side of al Qaeda, when interviewed recently, spoke of thefighting in Swat as a part of the grand strategy of "establishing smallindependent emirates" to be administered by them and their Islamist colleaguesin Waziristan, Swat, Bajaur and in Afghanistan. And it is the Swat valley thatmany in the intelligence agencies of the West have identified as the likelylocation of al Qaeda's fugitive top leadership.

There are sections within the Pakistan establishment who arecurrently celebrating the 'success' of their helicopter-gunship campaigns andthe limited ground engagement that has followed, which have, over the past days,been reportedly inflicting an average of 25-30 daily casualties on the Islamistextremists--though there is little independent verification of how many,among these, are in fact armed militants, and how many non-combatant and 'collateral'fatalities. But the 'gains' recorded in terms of the withdrawal of theextremists from the various Police Stations and Government establishments theyhad seized in the towns are only indices of the widening of the theatre ofconflict into the larger and more complex terrain of the Hills, where the Armywill tend to lose much of the advantage of its superior technologies. Thefighting in Swat has, in fact, just begun.

Kanchan Lakshman is Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management; AssistantEditor, Faultlines: Writings on Conflict & Resolution