What "innocent" lives - what the "innocents" are doing with TTP? Don't get swept away by the apologists of the enemies of Pakistan and of Islam, the best thing for Pakistan and Islam is to see the destruction of these and all who provide them support, aid and comfort.
Mulla Omar's new constitution
Sunday, August 22, 2010
S Iftikhar Murshed
The Quran exhorts Muslims: "O you who have attained to faith! Why do you say one thing and do another? Most loathsome is it in the sight of God that you say what you do not do!" The timeless implications of this passage from the Holy Scripture is also relevant in the context of the promises made in the new constitution promulgated by Mulla Omar who professes to be the supreme leader of the Afghan Taliban.
The Aug 3, 2010 issue of the Quetta-based newspaper, Azadi, carried details of the 35-page document which contains 14 chapters and 85 clauses. Omar's constitution emphasises that jihad should be strictly in accordance with God's command and the sunnah (Traditions) and every mujahid should win a place in the hearts of the people. Three days later, Afghan police discovered the bodies of 10 unarmed medical aid workers who were killed in the northern province of Badakshan. Six of the slain men and women were foreign volunteers who had travelled half way across the globe to provide medical care to impoverished Afghan villagers. The Taliban proudly claimed responsibility.
Another clause in the new constitution cites the sharia and enjoins humane treatment of captured Afghan and foreign troops. It emphasises that the "cutting of ears, noses and lips is strictly forbidden." Despite this, the mutilated remains of two US marines taken prisoner in Logar province by the Taliban on July 23, 2010 were recovered five days later by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.
The constitution stipulates that alleged informers and spies should not even be arrested unless they are first made aware of Islamic teachings, warned and given the opportunity to repent. Yet a few weeks earlier, a 7-year-old boy was hung on charges of spying. In July this year international media outlets reported that Mulla Omar had ordered his troops to kill or capture Afghan civilians, including women, who cooperate with ISAF.
There have been scores of similar incidents in the guise of jihad. Afghanistan bleeds but Pakistan bleeds no less. More people have died in Pakistan because of terrorist acts, perpetrated by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its supporters, in 2009 than in Afghanistan. Statistics compiled by the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies reveal that 3,021 people were killed and 7,334 were injured in 2,586 terrorist attacks which included 87 suicide bombings. The tally for Afghanistan, according to a UN report, was 2,412 civilian deaths.
The preceding years were no less conspicuous by violence. In Pakistan, the writ of the state was progressively eroded in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and in other parts of Khyber-Paktunkhwa. This was largely because the military operations undertaken against the TTP during the Musharraf era were never carried through. The peace deals that were subsequently negotiated with the Taliban not only gave them the space to regroup and rearm but also enabled them to consolidate their hold on almost the entire tribal territories where they enforced their own laws, levied taxes and ran the administration.
Subsequently, Swat was virtually handed over on a silver platter to the Tehreek-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi of Maulana Sufi Muhammad and to his firebrand son-in-law, Mulla Fazlullah of the TTP, when the PPP-led government allowed the former to impose his concept of Islamic justice under the Nizam-e-Adl Regulations. The punishments inflicted on ordinary people were as swift as they were brutal. The words of Maximilien de Robespierre (1758-1794), "Terror is nothing else than justice, prompt, secure and inflexible," proved true.
The government soon realised that appeasement never pays. The TTP promptly entered Buner while their influence spread like wildfire not only in the Malakand division but also over the entire province. Flushed with success, Sufi Muhammad declared the Constitution of Pakistan un-Islamic and vowed to impose the draconian rule of the Taliban not only in the country but also beyond. Military operations in Swat began on May 8, 2009 and after its successful culmination, in South Waziristan in the third week of October.
The difference between the Afghan Taliban and the TTP is not thicker that a thin sheet of paper. Their ideology is the same and both want to impose their obscurantist interpretations of Islam on the two neighbouring countries. After the Afghan Taliban had captured Mazar-e-Sharif and all but defeated the Northern Alliance in May 1997, the abrasive Mulla Razzak, who had been appointed by the Taliban as their leader north of the Hindu Kush, bluntly asked the Pakistan ambassador to Afghanistan, Aziz Ahmad Khan, who happened to be in Mazar-e-Sharif at the time, when Islamabad would enforce Islam in the country.
The Afghan Taliban, the TTP and the extremist outfits in southern Punjab constitute a triangle of terror and the symbiotic relationship between them was in evidence in April this year with the abduction of two former ISI officials, Col Sultan Amir Tarar (r), alias Col Imam, and Sqn Ldr Khalid Khawaja (r) by an obscure Punjab-based group with the fanciful name of Asian Tigers. The two were taken to a TTP-controlled area in North Waziristan where Khawaja was murdered in cold blood while Imam's life was spared after intercession on his behalf by Mulla Omar. He reportedly remains in the custody of either the Afghan Taliban or their Pakistani counterpart.
Despite this, some distinguish between the Afghan and the Pakistani Taliban in the belief that the former are "Pakistan-friendly." Even if the presumption of a friendly Afghan Taliban is true, a hidebound policy that does not take into account new realties can be disastrous. Short-term expediency is counterproductive if it impacts adversely on long-term national interests and, in this context, we must not ignore the irredentist ambitions of all Afghan groups, including the Taliban, who do not recognize the Durand Line as the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
In the ongoing military operations in Afghanistan and in the tribal regions of Pakistan the effectiveness of the overwhelming firepower available to both Kabul and Islamabad is substantially reduced against an amorphous enemy that avoids set-piece battles and relies exclusively on hit-and-run guerilla tactics. Furthermore the adversary is able to mobilise grassroots support for which it relies on the spirited dissemination of its skewed interpretation of Islamic doctrine.
Just as the state needs to permanently win back its territorial sovereignty in parts of the country previously lost to the extremists, the people of Pakistan need to reclaim their religion from the same extremists. The only way to defeat the ideology of extremist violence disguised in the garb of false religion is through the Quran which describes itself as a Book "for people who think" and states categorically "Verily, the vilest of all creatures in the sight of God are those deaf, those dumb ones who do not use their reason." The famous Egyptian-born theologian, Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, (d.1505), who is credited with 981 works, believed that "everything is based on the Quran." In other words, the Quran is Islam and there cannot be a more precise definition of the religion.
The writer is the publisher of Criterion quarterly. Email: iftimurshed ***********
