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Taliban Exploit Class Rifts in Pakistan

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PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The Taliban have advanced deeper into Pakistan by engineering a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants, according to government officials and analysts here.

The strategy cleared a path to power for the Taliban in the Swat Valley, where the government allowed Islamic law to be imposed this week, and it carries broad dangers for the rest of Pakistan, particularly the militants’ main goal, the populous heartland of Punjab Province.

In Swat, accounts from those who have fled now make clear that the Taliban seized control by pushing out about four dozen landlords who held the most power.

To do so, the militants organized peasants into armed gangs that became their shock troops, the residents, government officials and analysts said.

The approach allowed the Taliban to offer economic spoils to people frustrated with lax and corrupt government even as the militants imposed a strict form of Islam through terror and intimidation.

“This was a bloody revolution in Swat,” said a senior Pakistani official who oversees Swat, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the Taliban. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it sweeps the established order of Pakistan.”

The Taliban’s ability to exploit class divisions adds a new dimension to the insurgency and is raising alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which remains largely feudal.

Unlike India after independence in 1947, Pakistan maintained a narrow landed upper class that kept its vast holdings while its workers remained subservient, the officials and analysts said. Successive Pakistani governments have since failed to provide land reform and even the most basic forms of education and health care. Avenues to advancement for the vast majority of rural poor do not exist.

Analysts and other government officials warn that the strategy executed in Swat is easily transferable to Punjab, saying that the province, where militant groups are already showing strength, is ripe for the same social upheavals that have convulsed Swat and the tribal areas.

Mahboob Mahmood, a Pakistani-American lawyer and former classmate of President Obama’s, said, “The people of Pakistan are psychologically ready for a revolution.”

Sunni militancy is taking advantage of deep class divisions that have long festered in Pakistan, he said. “The militants, for their part, are promising more than just proscriptions on music and schooling,” he said. “They are also promising Islamic justice, effective government and economic redistribution.”

The Taliban strategy in Swat, an area of 1.3 million people with fertile orchards, vast plots of timber and valuable emerald mines, unfolded in stages over five years, analysts said.

The momentum of the insurgency built in the past two years, when the Taliban, reinforced by seasoned fighters from the tribal areas with links to Al Qaeda, fought the Pakistani Army to a standstill, said a Pakistani intelligence agent who works in the Swat region.

The insurgents struck at any competing point of power: landlords and elected leaders — who were usually the same people — and an underpaid and unmotivated police force, said Khadim Hussain, a linguistics and communications professor at Bahria University in Islamabad, the capital.

At the same time, the Taliban exploited the resentments of the landless tenants, particularly the fact that they had many unresolved cases against their bosses in a slow-moving and corrupt justice system, Mr. Hussain and residents who fled the area said.

Their grievances were stoked by a young militant, Maulana Fazlullah, who set up an FM radio station in 2004 to appeal to the disenfranchised. The broadcasts featured easy-to-understand examples using goats, cows, milk and grass. By 2006, Mr. Fazlullah had formed a ragtag force of landless peasants armed by the Taliban, said Mr. Hussain and former residents of Swat.

At first, the pressure on the landlords was subtle. One landowner was pressed to take his son out of an English-speaking school offensive to the Taliban. Others were forced to make donations to the Taliban.

Then, in late 2007, Shujaat Ali Khan, the richest of the landowners, his brothers and his son, Jamal Nasir, the mayor of Swat, became targets.

After Shujaat Ali Khan, a senior politician in the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, narrowly missed being killed by a roadside bomb, he fled to London. A brother, Fateh Ali Mohammed, a former senator, left, too, and now lives in Islamabad. Mr. Nasir also fled.

Later, the Taliban published a “most wanted” list of 43 prominent names, said Muhammad Sher Khan, a landlord who is a politician with the Pakistan Peoples Party, and whose name was on the list. All those named were ordered to present themselves to the Taliban courts or risk being killed, he said. “When you know that they will hang and kill you, how will you dare go back there?” Mr. Khan, hiding in Punjab, said in a telephone interview. “Being on the list meant ‘Don’t come back to Swat.’ ”

One of the main enforcers of the new order was Ibn-e-Amin, a Taliban commander from the same area as the landowners, called Matta. The fact that Mr. Amin came from Matta, and knew who was who there, put even more pressure on the landowners, Mr. Hussain said.

According to Pakistani news reports, Mr. Amin was arrested in August 2004 on suspicion of having links to Al Qaeda and was released in November 2006. Another Pakistani intelligence agent said Mr. Amin often visited a madrasa in North Waziristan, the stronghold of Al Qaeda in the tribal areas, where he apparently received guidance.

Each time the landlords fled, their tenants were rewarded. They were encouraged to cut down the orchard trees and sell the wood for their own profit, the former residents said. Or they were told to pay the rent to the Taliban instead of their now absentee bosses.

Two dormant emerald mines have reopened under Taliban control. The militants have announced that they will receive one-third of the revenues.

Since the Taliban fought the military to a truce in Swat in February, the militants have deepened their approach and made clear who is in charge.

When provincial bureaucrats visit Mingora, Swat’s capital, they must now follow the Taliban’s orders and sit on the floor, surrounded by Taliban bearing weapons, and in some cases wearing suicide bomber vests, the senior provincial official said.

In many areas of Swat the Taliban have demanded that each family give up one son for training as a Taliban fighter, said Mohammad Amad, executive director of a nongovernmental group, the Initiative for Development and Empowerment Axis.

A landlord who fled with his family last year said he received a chilling message last week. His tenants called him in Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, which includes Swat, to tell him his huge house was being demolished, he said in an interview here.

The most crushing news was about his finances. He had sold his fruit crop in advance, though at a quarter of last year’s price. But even that smaller yield would not be his, his tenants said, relaying the Taliban message. The buyer had been ordered to give the money to the Taliban instead.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/world/asia/17pstan.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
 
Let's suppose for one minute that the above is true. Where on earth is the army and how can the Taliban so freely operate? I'm flabbergasted. Who are these anonymous government officials and analysts that always make these claims, but never expose themselves?
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/world/asia/17pstan.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

Taliban Exploit Class Rifts to Gain Ground in Pakistan

The Taliban have advanced deeper into Pakistan by engineering a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants, according to government officials and analysts here.
......
In Swat, accounts from those who have fled now make clear that the Taliban seized control by pushing out about four dozen landlords who held the most power. To do so, the militants organized peasants into armed gangs that became their shock troops, the residents, government officials and analysts said.
....
------------------------
So is the issue something like India/Nepal has been having with Maoists ?
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/world/asia/17pstan.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

Taliban Exploit Class Rifts to Gain Ground in Pakistan

The Taliban have advanced deeper into Pakistan by engineering a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants, according to government officials and analysts here.
......
In Swat, accounts from those who have fled now make clear that the Taliban seized control by pushing out about four dozen landlords who held the most power. To do so, the militants organized peasants into armed gangs that became their shock troops, the residents, government officials and analysts said.
....
------------------------
So is the issue something like India/Nepal has been having with Maoists ?
@ wtf: good post! If the Maoists issue in India/Nepal is the peasantry rising against the ruling class then yes it could be likened to that.

More on the Swat emerald mines take-over, read this: BBC NEWS | South Asia | Taleban tap into Swat's emeralds
 
@ wtf: good post! If the Maoists issue in India/Nepal is the peasantry rising against the ruling class then yes it could be likened to that.

..........

Except that the Maoists have not managed to take over, overrun would be a better word, the administration in India as seems to be the case here.

More generally, key elements of the Taliban strategy appear to be unanswerable in this context. One, 'We're more Islamic than you'. Two, take out, terrorize even, the state's first line of defence, i.e. the police.

I'll say this about the Taliban leadership, they're saying exactly what they intend to do. I recall reading that about another political party doing it in Europe in the 1920s.
 
Except that the Maoists have not managed to take over, overrun would be a better word, the administration in India as seems to be the case here.

More generally, key elements of the Taliban strategy appear to be unanswerable in this context. One, 'We're more Islamic than you'. Two, take out, terrorize even, the state's first line of defence, i.e. the police.

I'll say this about the Taliban leadership, they're saying exactly what they intend to do. I recall reading that about another political party doing it in Europe in the 1920s.

They did that in Nepal though!
 
I was thinking about Malaysia and S. Vietnam as I was reading it. The notion of class struggle is timeless whether the French revolution, the CCP, or, ultimately, this.

Certainly, all the classic reasons exist. Hopefully, so too the remedies because a goodly percentage of these have proven successful given the self-satisfied lethargy of the state apparatus who've lived in detached luxury from their constituency for so long that they've clouded their vision.

I used to love reading posts here a couple of years ago when describing FATA to a westerner there was almost a paternal affection for the child-like and simple hill people who couldn't understand nor continence the future.

Always read self-serving then and the roots of this insurgency are clear enough.

Well, they say never bet against the people in a civil war...:agree:
 
It could also be an incipient class struggle, I don 't know. Seems like it but Pakistanis could speak to it better.

I look back to the Sikh insurgency in India in the 80s and 90s. One important reason it was ultimately unsuccessful, despite the heavy handed attitude of the Indian state early on, was that the Sikhs were tightly integrated into India's power and economic structure. They had and have a 'stake' in the system. As such mass support of the type needed to create the conditions for a revolution did not exist.

This, however, is still a challenge for India in the North East, although conditions are nowhere close to what seems to be in parts of Pakistan.

wtf, your point of the Nepal Maoists is well taken. Probably the same reasons; a too narrow and unchanging structure of elites.
 
A very worrying insight into the way the peaceful Valley of Swat has turned into a hotbed of Talibanness. How difficult to replicate it across Pakistan?
 
It's been bloody for a while in Swat. Remember the operation carried out last year to wipe out Fazlullah & Co. This will keep happening if the government keeps negotiating with the likes of Sufi Mohammad. It hasn't even been a decade when he took a 10,000 strong lashkar to Afghanistan in 2002 against the US invasion. He has militant links and it's quite obvious. supporting or accepting his credibility as a mediator/restorer of peace only gives courage to radical elements.
 
"This will keep happening if the government keeps negotiating with the likes of Sufi Mohammad."

To most less desperate for a way out than the ANP and the army one would think that Sufi Mohammad couldn't possibly be a good-faith bargainer.

Not here though and that's why I know in my bones that there'll always be an open door to these misunderstood miscreants.

They just need to have their hair ruffed, a hug, and a bit of positive affirmation to find their way in this world...
 
I posted pictures of several of the most prominent Mullahs (including Sufi) in the "Picture of the Day" thread in the members section. They are really cuddly fellows. They have a great deal of hair to ruff......
 
Yup.

Just misunderstood and not really loved by their moms who always favored lil' sis.

They never, ever forgot.
 
Just read this in today's newspaper,

Pak cleric returns to Lal Masjid, vows to continue campaign

Set free on bail, radical cleric Abdul Aziz on Friday made a defiant return to the Lal Masjid mosque, which he headed prior to a bloody storming by the Pakistan Army in 2007, and called on his supporters to be ready to sacrifice their lives for enforcing Islamic law across Pakistan.

Aziz made a triumphant return to the mosque in the heart of the city in a motorcade and led thousands of his supporters to Friday prayers. Thousands of people jam packed the rebuilt mosque to hear the cleric lead the prayers and deliver a rallying call to his supporters.

The hardline cleric, whose purge angered radical groups like the Taliban, made his appearance along with Ahmed Ludhianvi, leader of the banned Sipah-e-Sahaba group that reportedly has links with al-Qaeda.

In a sermon before the prayers, the firebrand cleric called on his followers to be ready to sacrifice their lives for implementing Shariah or Islamic law across the country. He said the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation for enforcing Shariah in the northwestern Swat valley should be extended to the whole of Pakistan.

Asked on Thursday night by reporters if activists of Lal Masjid will again take up arms, Aziz said: "If we are pushed to the wall, we would have no option but to defend ourselves."

He claimed he had never supported suicide bombings and that he had only warned the government by saying if an operation was launched against the mosque, suicide bombings could occur throughout Pakistan.

The Dawn newspaper reported Aziz was released under a ‘deal’ with the authorities whereby he will not create any trouble for the administration and not make any demand that may be difficult for the government to meet.

I have only posted part of the news item. For the full story
Pak cleric returns to Lal Masjid, vows to continue campaign
 

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