WHAT is the significance of the Swat agreement and what does it portend for the future? One needs to look back at Pakistan's decades-old contention with Islamism in order to put Swat in perspective.

To recap the well-known history Islamist parties opposed the creation of Pakistan because the movement was secular in nature and led by the secularist Jinnah who made his views explicit in his oft-quoted speech to the Constituent Assembly on Aug 11, 1947.

When Pakistan nevertheless came into being, the Islamist parties came to the constituent assembly with a blueprint for a theocratic state, notably a proposal that a committee of maulvis would vet — and veto if necessary — all legislation and actions of government for their conformity or otherwise to religious laws and injunctions. The leadership of the times — Liaquat Ali and others - were having none of this but felt that some kind of a sop had to be given to the Islamists.

Hence, the Objectives Resolution and then the provision that only a Muslim could be head of state. Islamists went along for the moment but kept up the pressure and gradually managed to obtain other concessions — the prime minister too would have to be Muslim; Qadianis were ex-communicated as non-Muslims; Islam was formally affirmed as state religion; alcohol, horse-racing etc were banned. All this was conceded under political pressure by the secular Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Then with Ziaul Haq came the heyday of Islamism. A man of conventional piety and political craftiness, in his years of absolute power he introduced Islamist measures that ranged from gimmicks such as describing bank interest as 'mark-up' to the Blasphemy Act and the Hudood Ordinance. A Sharia court was set up whose say could nullify any existing law that it considered un-Islamic.

Thus one fine morning the court held the modest land reforms introduced by Ayub Khan and Bhutto to be against Islam. All this is still with us 20 years after Ziaul Haq's death despite the flagrant injustices perpetrated under his one-man impositions. None of the governments

that have followed, those of the secular PPP, the heavily-mandated PML and Musharraf's 'enlightened moderation' were able or willing to remove these medieval laws or make any substantive change in them.

During her second term as prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, faced with a tiresome agitation by Maulana Sufi Mohammad, tried to buy him off with a semantic concession in Malakand judges would henceforth be called qazi, naib qazi and so forth, leaving everything else as is. This time the maulana has apparently obtained full satisfaction, Sharia is to be the only law in Malakand, any laws contrary to Sharia stand abrogated. The government claims that the agreement merely takes the situation back to what prevailed in the past, that it will provide speedy justice and that the agreement meets the long-standing demand of the people.

In that case what was the mayhem all about — the gunship attacks, artillery bombardments, arrests, demolition of houses? The plain fact is that the agreement was reached at the point of Maulana Fazlullah's guns and after his men continued unchecked to blow up schools, behead men and women, burn barber shops and video stores, suicide-bomb police stations and army posts. The ISPR spokesman, explaining why the army did not cut off or jam the FM radio network through which Fazlullah was running his campaign of murder and mayhem, said, “somehow or the other” the army did not have the required technology. Somehow or the other!

Now peace is said to be returning to Swat but clearly it is going to be peace on Taliban terms — these may or may not include girls' schools and beardless chins, time will show. So, once again, as in the past, Islamists have imposed their agenda by default. Islamist parties don't win elections, possibly because they do not say much about the problems that concern people in their daily lives — jobs, education, health, transport etc. But they are able to make their policies and views prevail on matters ranging from school syllabi to the flying of kites and the running of marathons.

Why this is so lies really outside the realm of politics and in the mind-set and background and psychology of the people who run the affairs of Pakistan. There is likely to be more sliding into religious conformity and orthodoxy as generations brought up on Pakistan's 'ideological' syllabi come to prevail in politics, the civil and military services and other fields.

So while I do not think that Pakistan is going to be Talibanised in the Mullah Omar manner, the slow drift towards Islamisation that began at the beginning, seems unstoppable hopefully of the benign kind e.g. TV anchorwomen keeping their heads covered, schoolgirls having to wear some kind of abaya, even perhaps, if a rightist government comes to power, a ministry of vice and virtue, and police-supervised prayers and fasting and that sort of things.

For the mass of people, concerned mainly with their day-to-day burdens, if these are relieved, none of this will matter very much. They are moderately devout Muslims, say their prayers and observe Ramazan, anyway. The so-called liberal intelligentsia who read each others' articles in English and are generally disparaged as 'westernised' will be discomfited in their lifestyles and worry about 'Pakistan's image' in the world i.e. what the western media think of our country.

The West does not have a high opinion of Pakistan and it has been a long time since Pakistan had a passably good image in the world. The West is concerned mainly that Pakistan should not harbour anti-western terrorists and should not allow its nuclear weapons to fall into their hands. As long as the United States is assured in this regard, it can live with an Islamist government in Pakistan as well as it does with Saudi Arabia.

The writer is a former diplomat and national security adviser.