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MORE than half this war is already won, but it’s the half that’s left which really counts. They can kill our children and attack our schools and playgrounds, but for all the stomach-churning wretchedness of this fight, none of these acts threatens the integrity of the state or the cohesion of society.
However cold this may sound given the horrible bombing in Lahore, it is a central fact in this fight. Not too long ago, the aim of the Pakistani Taliban movement included capture of the state of Pakistan, and they made credible advances towards that objective. It was slightly less than a decade ago that the movement consisted of militias that were capable of conquering and holding territory.
Omar Khalid, now the leader of the Jamaatul Ahrar, was amongst them in Mohmand Agency. In his early march through the agency, he encountered spirited opposition from one village in Prang Ghar that refused his demand to surrender. That village, I was told at the time, controlled some of the key routes through the mountains that separated Mohmand Agency from Bajaur, which opened a route to Lower Dir and Swat, where another militia connected with the TTP was marching towards Mingora.
The other militia was led by Fazlullah and it successfully captured village after village in the valley, eventually reaching Mingora itself. The attempts to control Prang Ghar, according to those familiar with the terrain, were partially motivated by the need for a direct overland supply line between Fata and Swat.
What is left is the endgame, and this is the trickiest part of the entire operation.
Until then, overland communications between these two regions had to traverse through Afghanistan or very close to the border in any event. So Omar Khalid’s march into Mohmand was not just a power grab for the sake of it, but part of a larger strategy to consolidate territorial gains and create the conditions for further advancement.
Anyone who has followed events even cursorily over the past decade remembers this. The year 2009 proved crucial in reversing this advance of the TTP, starting with the Swat operation in May, and continuing through with an escalation in drone strikes on the TTP leadership. The loss of territory and the creation of a leadership crisis at the top destabilised the movement and it has struggled to find its footing ever since. By 2014, it had been scattered and suffered from defections that left it a rump of what it used to be.
Today, all it is capable of doing is sending ill-trained youngsters to scale the walls of schools and parks and go on a short-lived shooting spree or detonate a suicide vest. Its only objectives, made apparent in a video released by the Jamaatul Ahrar, are to “avenge the oppression of the mujahideen in the tribal and urban areas” and “humiliation of the mujahideen in Pakistani prisons”.
“Our second objective is to seek the safe release of Pakistani and foreign mujahideen in Pakistan,” says the video statement. I used the transcription available on the Long War Journal website.
The rest is all a ramble, about establishing a caliphate in the world and seizing nuclear weapons. The rump of a militia that once fought to conquer and hold territory in a swathe running from Fata to Mohmand, Bajaur and Swat, is today sending kids to kill other kids in schools and playgrounds to “avenge the oppression of the mujahideen” and to seek the safe release of their captured colleagues.
So what is left is the endgame, and this is the trickiest part of the entire operation. Scattering the TTP between 2009 and 2014 took a mighty fight that displaced millions of people. What lessons have been learned from that mighty half-decade long fight?
First, the fight must be waged by a ruler who is not hobbled by legitimacy concerns. This was Musharraf’s biggest problem. His lack of legitimacy was the stone in the general’s shoe, and all his attempts to take on the Taliban ended in grief for him because nobody could figure out who exactly he was fighting for: the country or himself. The Swat Taliban tightened their grip on Mingora amidst the din of the Lal Masjid episode and the lawyers’ movement.
The large campaigns waged by former COAS Kayani in Swat and South Waziristan did a lot to scatter the TTP. But during this same time, as the army fought extremists in the country, the legitimacy of an elected government came under serious assault through a series of bizarre crises running from Memogate to the Tahirul Qadri march on Islamabad. The TTP’s assault on democratic parties during election time in 2013 was also a highlight of this period, undermining the gains made in the northwest.
Second, the fight must feature no distractions, and its tools should not be used to pursue political objectives. For example, one cannot wage a campaign against extremism while using the blasphemy allegation to silence opponents, whether political or in the media. While the fight advanced against the militias of the TTP, a TV channel found itself accused of blasphemy and had the hounds of the far right, of the variety currently camped in the Red Zone and worse, unleashed upon it.
The fight has changed since 2014, when the TTP splintered. This is no longer a fight against militias seeking to control territory. It is now a fight against armed extremists doing whatever is left in their power to pursue narrow ends. Much has to change to manage this fight. The political leadership needs to find its courage. But equally importantly, the endless campaign of vilifying civilian institutions must end. To take this fight to its logical end, and truly establish the writ of the state across the country, the rules of the game by which the state operates must be taken more seriously than they have been since 2008.
The writer is a member of staff.
Twitter: @khurramhusain
Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2016
