New Delhi‘s Legitimate Concern

There is justified concern in New Delhi over the latest development in Pakistan: Islamabad signing a peace deal with the founder of the Tanzim Nifaz Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) so that there is cessation of fighting in the Swat valley simultaneous with the enforcement of Shariah laws in the region. The Pakistani authorities argue that this is a tactical retreat in order to help the Army go all out against Baitullah Mehsud‘s Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Waziristan since it is the unalloyed fundamentalist TTP which poses the real threat to Islamabad. While critics of the deal insist that in effect Shariah laws will be implemented as per the agreement with the TNSM founder Maulana Sufi Mohammed, the official line in Islamabad is that actually Nizam-e-Adl regulations, and not the Shariah laws, have been agreed upon. But according to informed opinion, all such efforts at explaining and rationalising the deal are nothing but hogwash for there is little to choose between the TNSM and TTP.

Peshawar‘s provincial government of the secular Awami National Party (ANP) and Islamabad‘s civilian government headed by Asif Ali Zardari appear to believe that Sufi Mohammed will be able to deliver on his promise to end hostilities in the area; his son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah has been waging war in the Swat region and Sufi Mohammed has assured that that would come to a halt with the agreement reached between the two sides.

However, a similar six-point agreement with Sufi Mohammed was envisaged in April 2008 and the latter convinced Islamabad that Fazlullah would honour the accord but that did not happen; now a similar exercise has been undertaken by Islamabad with sceptics finding nothing novel in it to distinguish it from the previous accord, and there is every possibility, in their view, that this deal would meet the same fate as the earlier one. Moreover Fazlullah has time and again declared Mehsud as his leader. So such a deal would only strengthen the Taliban in the final analysis.

This is most dangerous as the Taliban have infiltrated into Pakistan’s Punjab province and lately carried out two major suicide attacks there this month itself thus prompting President Zardari to highlight the deep roots struck by the outfit in large parts of the country. The killing of a journalist working with Geo TV in the area soon after the accord has heightened the danger. Even if from the standpoint of operational tactics of the Pakistan military there is every logic in concentrating attacks on Mehsud‘s TTP in Waziristan (and a deal in the Swat valley could help mount such an assault), one is not certain how far the military itself is interested in launching such a concerted onslaught on the Taliban given the reported penetration of jehadi elements into the ranks of the armed forces in substantial measure.

As for the US, regardless of the pronouncements of influential members of the Obama Administration conveying their sense of anxiety over Ialamabad’s deal with a part of the Taliban, the US head of state himself has gone on record approving such “diplomatic” endeavours to engage the Taliban. It must also be borne in mind that the US is interested not in fighting the Taliban as such because its primary aim is to liquidate the Al-Qaeda and in particular Osama bin Laden. Yet the reliable reports indicating that Osama has taken shelter in Pakistan‘s FATA region bring into sharp focus the limitations of the US‘ influence on Pakistani officialdom apart from the extent of the Pakistani military‘s sincerity in waging the war on terror.

In such a scenario New Delhi‘s concern over the latest event in Pakistan is not in the least misplaced. But India must not embark on any knee-jerk reaction. Rather, New Delhi should do everything possible to assist the civilian government in Islamabad in combating the machinations of the fissiparous forces like the Taliban which were once fostered by the ISI and have now assumed frightening proportions threatening to swallow up the whole nation while derailing, in the process, its ongoing experiment with democracy. This is no doubt a difficult proposition. Nevertheless, the tenor of the External Affairs Minister‘s statement in Parliament with regard to the Pak response to the Mumbai terror attack does offer some reassurance on this score.

February 19 S.C.