Thursday, May 31, 2007
Who is targeting Peshawar?
Another car bomb in front of the NWFP High Court in Peshawar has left one dead and nine seriously injured. This is not the first time that Peshawar has been subjected to terrorist action. And it is not the first time that commentators are bemused over the motivation of those causing it.
The NWFP government of Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) keeps hinting that the blasts in the province are being engineered by the federal government. The animus of the JUI chief minister, Mr Akram Durrani, is of a piece with the acrimony on which the clerical politics of Pakistan is based. But the acts of terrorism have also targeted a federal minister and the Pakistan army and are therefore difficult to pin on the âintelligence agenciesâ serving the federal government.
The statement issued by the provincial information minister, Mr Asif Iqbal Daudzai, is to be taken with a big pinch of political salt. He said that the blast was âa repercussion of the flawed foreign policy of the federal governmentâ and âsome elements are out to defame the MMA government in the provinceâ. Another NWFP minister, Mr Malik Zafar, however, let the federal government off the hook by saying that âthe intelligence agencies were preoccupied with other matters and were not finding timeâ to pay attention to blasts that had rocked the city in recent months.
The MMA has ruled the NWFP and Balochistan since 2002 when the last elections attracted a large Pushtun vote bank infuriated by the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and Pakistanâs support to it. The Pushtun ire was directed against Islamabad, and the Pushtun who voted for the MMA wanted the government in the NWFP to re-create the Taliban utopia in the province, or at least to transform the public life of the people there in accordance with the sharia of the Taliban that is mostly reliant on vigilante punishments.
The heavy lifting in the MMA is done by the JUI, the party with the largest measure of support in the province in general and the tribal areas in particular, administered by the federal government. With the passage of time, the tribal areas have been able to âliberateâ themselves from the control of the federal government through âdealsâ made with it after foiling military action against them. The tribal Taliban there have replaced the government of Pakistan in much of the FATA and have also trespassed into some of the territories of the province ruled by the MMA.
The success of the MMA in re-enacting the idyll of the Taliban has been seriously curtailed by the federal government. The latter has moved the courts against an attempt of the NWFP government to introduce the tough sharia of the Taliban through what it called the supra-judicial Hasba Bill. The MMA government tried in the beginning to punish such public transgressions as advertisements on billboards but discovered that this didnât go down well with the judiciary or the people at large. But the pressure from the federally administered tribal areas (FATA) and provincially administered tribal areas (PATA) is immense on the clerics that rule from Peshawar.
The pressure is not against the strictness of MMA rule but the reluctance of the MMA government to oppress the majority of the people living under it in the name of Islam. The MMA has tried to tightrope-walk but that has not impressed the maximalists who resent the fact that the JUI is not willing to resign from governments in the NWFP and Balochistan and join the purists. The MMA government allowed the women of Peshawar to donate their jewellery to pay for the video cassettes which the extremists âFMâ clerics were blowing up in Malakand and Swat. But now it faces the final challenge of actually declaring khilafat and breaking away from the federation.
The rise of âFMâ mullah Fazlullah in Swat in the PATA offers an Islamic seduction that the people of Kohat and Bannu within the normally administered area may find irresistible. Some of those areas already have a rising local Taliban-style government. And the father of Fazlullah was no less a person than Sufi Muhammad himself, the leader of the Tehreek Nifaz Shariat Muhammadi (TNSM) who tried to create a Taliban-style government in Malakand when the Taliban were still in power in Afghanistan. Fazlullah may in time declare independence like the mullahs of Khyber Agency; he is rich and his new madrassa is estimated to cost $2.5 million.
The terrorist acts of the NWFP speak the language of Islamic radicalism. They are inviting the NWFP government to make a clean break with the impure system it is working under and declare its allegiance to the pure system it had promised but did not deliver. Judging from the money that is pouring into the âFMâ radio clerics of the tribal areas, the plan is to get the NWFP to join the great sweep of Islamisation coming from the west of Pakistan till enough territory is lost by Pakistan to make it a permanent safe haven for those whom the world is hunting for global terrorism.
The tragedy is that there is no strategy in Islamabad to combat this encroachment of Pakistani sovereignty. *
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\05\31\story_31-5-2007_pg3_1
Who is targeting Peshawar?
Another car bomb in front of the NWFP High Court in Peshawar has left one dead and nine seriously injured. This is not the first time that Peshawar has been subjected to terrorist action. And it is not the first time that commentators are bemused over the motivation of those causing it.
The NWFP government of Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) keeps hinting that the blasts in the province are being engineered by the federal government. The animus of the JUI chief minister, Mr Akram Durrani, is of a piece with the acrimony on which the clerical politics of Pakistan is based. But the acts of terrorism have also targeted a federal minister and the Pakistan army and are therefore difficult to pin on the âintelligence agenciesâ serving the federal government.
The statement issued by the provincial information minister, Mr Asif Iqbal Daudzai, is to be taken with a big pinch of political salt. He said that the blast was âa repercussion of the flawed foreign policy of the federal governmentâ and âsome elements are out to defame the MMA government in the provinceâ. Another NWFP minister, Mr Malik Zafar, however, let the federal government off the hook by saying that âthe intelligence agencies were preoccupied with other matters and were not finding timeâ to pay attention to blasts that had rocked the city in recent months.
The MMA has ruled the NWFP and Balochistan since 2002 when the last elections attracted a large Pushtun vote bank infuriated by the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and Pakistanâs support to it. The Pushtun ire was directed against Islamabad, and the Pushtun who voted for the MMA wanted the government in the NWFP to re-create the Taliban utopia in the province, or at least to transform the public life of the people there in accordance with the sharia of the Taliban that is mostly reliant on vigilante punishments.
The heavy lifting in the MMA is done by the JUI, the party with the largest measure of support in the province in general and the tribal areas in particular, administered by the federal government. With the passage of time, the tribal areas have been able to âliberateâ themselves from the control of the federal government through âdealsâ made with it after foiling military action against them. The tribal Taliban there have replaced the government of Pakistan in much of the FATA and have also trespassed into some of the territories of the province ruled by the MMA.
The success of the MMA in re-enacting the idyll of the Taliban has been seriously curtailed by the federal government. The latter has moved the courts against an attempt of the NWFP government to introduce the tough sharia of the Taliban through what it called the supra-judicial Hasba Bill. The MMA government tried in the beginning to punish such public transgressions as advertisements on billboards but discovered that this didnât go down well with the judiciary or the people at large. But the pressure from the federally administered tribal areas (FATA) and provincially administered tribal areas (PATA) is immense on the clerics that rule from Peshawar.
The pressure is not against the strictness of MMA rule but the reluctance of the MMA government to oppress the majority of the people living under it in the name of Islam. The MMA has tried to tightrope-walk but that has not impressed the maximalists who resent the fact that the JUI is not willing to resign from governments in the NWFP and Balochistan and join the purists. The MMA government allowed the women of Peshawar to donate their jewellery to pay for the video cassettes which the extremists âFMâ clerics were blowing up in Malakand and Swat. But now it faces the final challenge of actually declaring khilafat and breaking away from the federation.
The rise of âFMâ mullah Fazlullah in Swat in the PATA offers an Islamic seduction that the people of Kohat and Bannu within the normally administered area may find irresistible. Some of those areas already have a rising local Taliban-style government. And the father of Fazlullah was no less a person than Sufi Muhammad himself, the leader of the Tehreek Nifaz Shariat Muhammadi (TNSM) who tried to create a Taliban-style government in Malakand when the Taliban were still in power in Afghanistan. Fazlullah may in time declare independence like the mullahs of Khyber Agency; he is rich and his new madrassa is estimated to cost $2.5 million.
The terrorist acts of the NWFP speak the language of Islamic radicalism. They are inviting the NWFP government to make a clean break with the impure system it is working under and declare its allegiance to the pure system it had promised but did not deliver. Judging from the money that is pouring into the âFMâ radio clerics of the tribal areas, the plan is to get the NWFP to join the great sweep of Islamisation coming from the west of Pakistan till enough territory is lost by Pakistan to make it a permanent safe haven for those whom the world is hunting for global terrorism.
The tragedy is that there is no strategy in Islamabad to combat this encroachment of Pakistani sovereignty. *
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\05\31\story_31-5-2007_pg3_1
