LETTER FROM SOUTH ASIA

If the Swat peace deal was, indeed, part of a political trap for the jihadis it was a brilliant tactical move. The ANP and PPP took on the momentary ire of a minority of committed anti-jihadi segments, to soon inherit an elusive political consensus against the militants. As if to underscore this point the government took the peace deal to the national parliament and got the endorsement of Nawaz Sharif’s recalcitrant Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N). By openly defying the peace deal, the jihadis disrupted the rightwing consensus that the war in Pakistan’s north was not “our war”. But the most important implication of the classic set-up view is that, finally, the civilian government and the military were coordinating their moves to devastating effect for the jihadis. Cooperation between the civilian government and the military against jihadi militants, even if temporary and contingent on US stewardship, will be a historic shift.

Divergent Narratives and Common Ground

What is disconcerting for now for those who believe in a Pakistani future, is the wide gulf that separates the narrative about the war in the Punjabi heartland and in the “peripheral” Pashtun, Baloch and Sindhi regions. The heartland is being pushed hard to make the transition from “this is not our war” to “the Taliban are coming down the hills”. It is being asked to swap one form of xenophobia for another. The “Talibanisation” of jihadi militancy serves an effective though insidious purpose. The subtle invocation of the wild Pashtun tribesman taking over the plains and the cities taps into a longer memory and serves to replace the threat from the US and India. In the periphery it is common to hear that the Taliban and the military are but two sides of the same coin.

What most non-Pashtuns failed to pick up in the Pashtun conversation about the Swat peace deal was the near unanimity of opinion across classes, regions, and ideologies in support of the deal. Liberals, Pashtun nationalists, communists and feminists were one with the pious in a rguing that peace was the first priority even if it meant handing over Malakand to the Taliban. They felt frustrated that their friends and peers across the Indus would just not understand their concerns. The idea that the Pashtun political and civil society was being decimated in what was suspected to be a phony war between the Taliban and the military, remains a core belief. For the Pashtuns the truce was a way of extricating themselves from this “phony war” to live and fight another day.

Military action following the breakdown of the peace deal is being handled in a similarly sophisticated way. Not content with becoming entangled in what it sees as a “phony war” again, Pashtun political society wants to see credible signs of irreversible military commitment against the jihadis before it will pop its head above the parapets. There have been just too many beheadings to take any further chances. If this means that a real war will be harder to fight and longer to win than necessary, the military has none but itself to blame. What is clear, however, is that if the fight is for real this time around, and the military is seen to cross some point of no return, Pashtun political society will step in, and expedite a military victory.

Milestones Passed and Coming Up

There are specific milestones people mention – and ones that make eminent sense. An important one is the confirmed death or capture of specific jihadi commanders. There is not much credibility to the claim of scoring Taliban deaths, particularly when these are reported in multiples of five, if nothing is known about key commanders who have spread the reign of fear. There is no news on these characters, but acknowledging the credibility gap, the military’s public relations’ team has started to publish names of lower-level commanders captured or killed. Multiples of five too have given way to more specific information.

There are other signs too that what is happening now is different from before. While Musharraf made much of the claim that the Pakistani military lost 800 men and officers fighting against the Taliban in his tenure, these deaths were never used for war propaganda. In stark contrast the public broadcaster as well as private television channels are now fully involved in what feels like a war effort. Military funerals, interviews of “martyred” soldiers’ family members, and patriotic songs have been telecast for domestic viewers. Heroism which was previously the preserve of the jihadis is now an attribute of the military men who are confronting them.

There is mobilisation too of diverse political constituencies against the Taliban. In the past the military agencies played an instrumental role in constructing cross-sectarian Islamic alliances – particularly between the leaders of the majority syncretic Barelvis and the e mergent hardline Deobandis. Now the former clerics are tripping over one another in denouncing the Taliban. The Deobandis too have been divided, with some issuing edicts against suicide bombs and beheadings – the favoured methods of the jihadis.

It will be prudent to take a cue from the Pashtuns who have suffered the longest and the hardest in the “phony war”. It is true that there are today unprecedented propaganda or political moves against jihadi militancy, even though these are mostly articulated in terms of opposition to Pashtun Taliban. These moves are not irreversible in themselves, but it can be hoped that if sustained for long enough, even under US pressure, their cumulative effect might be a definitive change of course. After all, the Pakistani military’s embrace of jihad was itself a barely considered drift that got fossilised into a policy.

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