Australian Journal of International Affairs

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Fighting the Taliban: Pakistan at war with itself

Ashok K. Behuria

To cite this article: Ashok K. Behuria (2007) Fighting the Taliban: Pakistan at war with itself,
Australian Journal of International Affairs, 61:4, 529-543, DOI: 10.1080/10357710701684963

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Australian Journal of International Affairs Vol. 61, No. 4,
pp. 529
543, December 2007

Fighting the Taliban: Pakistan at war with itself

ASHOK K. BEHURIA

Some new groups calling themselves Pakistani Taliban with links to the
Afghan Taliban have asserted themselves in the tribal areas of Pakistan. This
has complicated the internal security scenario for Pakistan. This article traces
the roots of the problem and argues that the State with its confessional
character emits strong Islamist impulses making it easy for Taliban-like forces
to take roots in Pashtun dominated areas in Pakistan. While the process of
Talibanisation may not succeed in engulfing the entire state of Pakistan, it will
certainly pose a critical internal challenge, contributing to its fragility and
compelling Pakistan to stay perennially engaged with its internal security. Roll
back is difficult but not impossible. This will involve the strong commitment
of the State to take steps to bring about social, economic and political
transformation in the Taliban-infested areas, and an effort on the part of the
international community to help Pakistan in this critical endeavour.

General Pervez Musharraf, President of Pakistan, admitted on 15 September

2006 that the ‘‘centre of gravity of terrorism’’ had shifted from Al Qaeda to the
Taliban and that the Taliban was a ‘‘more dangerous element because it has
roots in the people’’ unlike Al Qaeda and was ‘‘more organised’’.1 He regarded
the Taliban as an ‘‘obscurantist social concept’’ and argued that the real danger
lay in the emerging strength of the Taliban and in the possibility of converting
their resistance ‘‘into a national war by the [Pashtuns] against . . . all foreign
forces’’. The resurgence of the Taliban was the pet theme of analysts and
observers who tracked developments in Afghanistan since 2004
2005. In Kabul
in August 2007, Musharraf expressed his concern about ‘‘a particularly dark
form’’ of terrorism confronting the region and said that people of Pakistan and
Afghanistan faced ‘‘a great danger in the shape of fringe groups, a small
minority that preaches hate, violence and backwardness’’.2

The Malaise
Despite the fact that it has carried out several successful and bloody attacks on
the security forces of Pakistan (and also against the international forces

Ashok Behuria is a Research Fellow with the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA),
India. He has been working on different dimensions of Pakistani society and politics and published
many research papers on sectarianism in Pakistan, India-Pakistan relations and Ethno-national
assertion in Pakistan. At present he is focusing on roots of Islamic radicalism in Pakistan. Basho
kkb@gmail.com
ISSN 1035-7718 print/ISSN 1465-332X online/07/040529-15 # 2007 Australian Institute of International Affairs
DOI: 10.1080/10357710701684963
530 Ashok K. Behuria

stationed in Afghanistan) and killed many civilians, the Taliban has not been
banned by Pakistan or the US as a terrorist organisation. This could partly be
because the authorities in Pakistan and the US still consider the Taliban as a
force that can be moulded to serve their ends in Afghanistan. Perhaps mindful of
the historical context in which the Taliban rose as a militant Islamist movement
in Afghanistan after the successful ‘‘Jihad’’ against Soviet occupation between
1979 and 1988, the Taliban is viewed as a natural heir of Islamist radicalism
unleashed during this period. Were it not for its truck with Al Qaeda, it would
still be regarded as a localised phenomenon which the world could ignore and
get used to.
However, now that the Taliban has made its presence felt in Pakistan,
authorities there have taken serious note of its intentions and ability to pose a
critical challenge to internal security of Pakistan. In fact, the emergence of a
shadowy group called the ‘‘Pakistani Taliban’ and their continuing links with
the Afghan Taliban has embarrassed the leadership in Pakistan. That the
Taliban had a Pakistani coordinate was well known. But it was largely regarded
as a force operating outside Pakistan. The prospect of having to contend with
such a radical force at the internal level has disturbed the security calculus in
Pakistan.
The case of pro-Taliban militants laying siege on the Red Mosque at the heart
of the Pakistani capital, in February 2007, until they were flushed out through
military action, along with the rising incidence of suicide attacks against
security forces in the tribal areas of Pakistan and the spread of the influence of
the Taliban beyond the tribal areas in recent years, suggest that the Taliban
phenomenon will affect Pakistan for a prolonged period and warrants a deeper
analysis of the malaise that is affecting the Pakistani state at the moment.

The Afghan Taliban

Most of the analysts of the Taliban phenomenon explain it away as an after-
effect of the Afghan Jihad. It was indeed a movement of the students (Taliban
means student in Arabic/Urdu) from the religious seminaries in Pakistan who
sought a way out of the civil war that raged in Afghanistan after the withdrawal
of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan between 1988 and 1994.3 They made
their presence felt around Maiwand and marched to Kandahar in 1994, making
it the nucleus of the Taliban movement. Active patronage from Pakistani
intelligence boosted the morale of the movement as it spread into other areas of
Afghanistan and swept into the capital city of Kabul in 1996. The Taliban was
viewed by many as a better alternative to the tribal warlords and a host of
warring militant groups seeking to establish their writ in Afghanistan. While the
US watched it all from a distance, it silently assented in the hope of bringing
peace to Afghanistan through a promising student militia who also enjoyed
immense popular backing in the initial years of their triumph.
 Fighting the Taliban 531

However, as soon as the Taliban settled in Kabul, they revealed their

conservative orientation and their rigid, inflexible and illiberal interpretation of
Quran which formed the core of their rule in Afghanistan. Their leader Mullah
Omar, who was soon seen to be allying himself with Osama Bin Laden of Al
Qaeda, became the Amir-ul-Momineen (Leader of the Faithful) and his writ
became law in Afghanistan. The Taliban sought to impose a strict version of
Islam4 and turn Afghanistan into a laboratory of Jihad. It reversed the trend of
progressive social reconstruction attempted by the communists during the
Soviet occupation. Men were forced to grow beards and pray five times a day.
Barbers were asked to close down their shops. Women were barred from
working in public offices and forced to wear the veil, stay home, and not to
appear in public places unescorted by men. Dance and music were banned.
Islamic systems of punishment were introduced and public executions became
common place. A specific department, called the Amr bil Ma’ruf wa Nahy an al
Munkar (Department of Promotion of Virtue and Eradication of Vice) was
established in Kabul in December 1996 to ensure the observation of Islamic
practices.
The Taliban spread from the Pashtun majority areas in the South to areas
dominated by other ethnic minorities such as the Hazaras (mostly Shias),
Uzbeks and Tajiks. The Taliban storm raged through these areas, through force
and fraud, with active participation from both the Pakistani State5 and non-
state actors 6 between 1996 and 2000. Excepting in the Panjsir valley, the
Taliban controlled most other areas by early 2001.
The threat of sanctions and prolonged economic isolation by the wider
international community did not help as Afghanistan became increasingly
isolated and a haven for Islamist extremists, closer in orientation to the
Deobandi-Wahabi version of Islam and a training ground for jihad for radicals
from all corners of the world. The attacks on the twin towers on September 11,
2001 made the world realise the extent of the forces Mullah Omar and Osama
Bin Laden had raised in their Islamist laboratory in Afghanistan.
The subsequent US led attack on Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, for harbouring Al
Qaeda terrorists, began in October 2001, and the Taliban fled from Kabul.
Steady streams of Taliban and Al Qaeda militants trickled into the tribal areas of
Pakistan bordering Afghanistan. These militants, multi-national in character* /

Afghan, Arab, Pakistani, Chechen, Uzbek, and Uyighur * had fought in support
/

of the Taliban in Afghanistan. However, Afghans and Pakistanis constituted a

majority of these forces. While many of the Taliban forces stayed within the
tribal areas, Al Qaeda elements spread across the length and breadth of Pakistan.
The arrest of many top Al Qaeda cadres from various towns of the Punjab, Sindh
and Balochistan later proved this point. The forces loyal to the Taliban confined
themselves to the tribal borderlands of Pakistan, and virtual hibernation until
their resurgence in 2003. While the Pakistani State moved its troops to the tribal
Northwest Frontier Provinces under US pressure, its ability to contain the
resurgence of the Taliban has been limited since early 2003.
532 Ashok K. Behuria

After the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, Pakistani militants siding with them
came back home to experiment with the Taliban precepts in the tribal
hinterland and successfully made their writ run in local pockets in Waziristan,
Bajaur, Malakand, Swat and even in Khyber. The extent of Taliban infiltration
was evident by 2004
2005 with the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan
and militant assertions of local Pakistani Taliban in Miramshah in 2005.7

The Pakistani Taliban: The Pre-9/11 Years

The Taliban were the products of the Deobandi religious seminaries (Ma-
drassas) which dotted the Pashtun-dominated areas of Pakistan along the
borders. Madrassas also mushroomed in the Punjab and Sindh too. In fact,
the Banuri mosque of Karachi played a leading role in the Afghan jihad. The
intelligence agencies of Pakistan, the USA and Saudi Arabia had promoted the
establishment of these seminaries and designed special curricula for ideological
indoctrination of Afghan refugee children, mindful of the Jihad raging in
Afghanistan.
While Jamiat-i-Islami (JI) enjoyed prime patronage under the Zia-ul-Haq
regime to mobilise support for the Jihad, and was a major voice in deciding
which groups Islamabad would support, Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) was
busy setting up Madrassas for educating the young Afghans and preparing them
for the Jihad.8 Once the Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan and the
mujahideen came to power, the the Pakistani intelligence agencies failed in their
attempt to bring all groups together and Afghanistan was plagued by
internecine feuds until the rise of the Taliban in 1994. As the Taliban gained
popularity, it attracted material and moral help from the Pakistani establish-
ment, enabling it to bring the entire state under its control. It was then that the
JUI of Pakistan overtook JI as the main mediating political group in Pakistan
between the Pakistani State and the Taliban. Most of the top leadership of the
Taliban were educated in Pakistani madrassas controlled by the JUI. JI was not
as madrassa-centred as JUI and the latter was in charge of almost 80 per cent of
the madrassas in Pakistan by the 1990s.
The JUI-Taliban relationship continued to grow even if the JUI suffered a split
in 1990 over the issue of its leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman supporting the
Benazir Bhutto-led government. Maulana Shami-ul-Haq broke away from JUI
and founded his own branch after his name, i.e, JUI(S). After being overthrown
in 1991, Benazir made a come-back in 1993. It was then that her government
decided to back the Taliban. Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s faction of the JUI
played an important role in developing this strategic relationship between
Pakistani intelligence and the Taliban. Maulana Sami-ul-Haq, whose madrassa
at Akora Khattak, called the Dar-ul-Uloom Haqqania, claimed to have
produced the most Taliban cadres, also joined this partnership. As the Taliban
became more entrenched there was a fringe Islamist element in Pakistan,
 Fighting the Taliban 533

produced by these madrassas and fired with the Jihad ideal, which started
demanding Taliban type rule in Pakistan.
One was Maulana Sufi Muhammad, who founded his Tehreek Nifaz Shariat-
e-Muhammadi (TNSM) in 1992, and launched a formal movement for the
imposition of Taliban style rule in Pakistan. By November
December 1994,
TNSM had started asserting itself with thousands of its armed supporters
seeking to impose Sharia in the Malakand division in the North West Frontier
Province (NWFP) of Pakistan. In 1995, its followers occupied government
offices in the Swat district and demanded the imposition of Sharia in the area.
On September 6, 1998, in reaction to the August 1998 American missile attacks
on Afghanistan, the TNSM threatened to attack American citizens and property
in Pakistan unless the USA apologised to the Muslim world for its missile
strikes. Later on October 27, 2001, about 10,000 TNSM cadres from Bajaur,
led by Maulana Sufi Mohammed and heavily armed with Kalashnikovs, rocket
launchers, missiles, anti-aircraft guns, hand-grenades and swords, crossed the
Pakistan-Afghan border to join the ranks of the Taliban in their fight against the
US-led forces.
The pressure from the religious elements was so great on the then Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif that in 1998 he introduced the fifteenth amendment to
the Pakistani constitution . . . Clause 2 of this proposed Article states:

The Federal Government shall be under an obligation to take steps to

enforce the Shariah, to establish salat, to administer zakat, to promote amr
bil ma’roof and nahi anil munkar (to prescribe what is right and to forbid
what is wrong), to eradicate corruption at all levels and to provide
substantial socio-economic justice, in accordance with the principles of
Islam, as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah.9

The bill was passed in the lower house on October 8, 1998. But it was not
presented to the upper house because Nawaz Sharif’s party did not have the
required majority there. It is rumoured that the Prime Minister was waiting for
the day when he would have a majority in the upper house to get it passed as an
affirmation of his devotion to Islam. In reality it was an attempt to steal the
thunder of the religious political parties. However, in practical terms Pakistan
had moved closer to the Taliban version of Islam by then.
There was also the case of Mulana Akram Awan of Chakwal, Shiekh of the
Naqshbandiah Owaisiah order, threatening to lay siege on Rawalpindi in April
2001 demanding imposition of Sharia in Pakistan. He was supported by
Zaheerul Islam Abbasi, the retired General who had planned a coup in 1995
and subsequently been sentenced to imprisonment later that year, and the late
Azam Tariq, the Deobandi-Sunni leader of Sipah-e-Sahaba. General Musharraf
had to negotiate with the Maulana and assure him that he would try to
accommodate his demands in lieu of the former pulling out his men from
Rawalpindi. Musharraf also tried to co-opt and win Azam Tariq’s allegiance by
helping him get elected to the National Assembly. Despite Azam Tariq’s
534 Ashok K. Behuria

assassination in 2003, Pakistani supporters of the Taliban began asserting

themselves in different locales inside Pakistan trying to impose a radical version
of Islam on the people even before September 11, 2001.

The Roots of Talibanisation

The roots that sustain Islamist demands for the establishment of the rule of
Sharia in Pakistan ironically lie in official Islam, championed by the Pakistani
state. The following analysis indicates the Pakistani state has been under
pressure from the right wing ulema (religious scholars) since its inception to
convert the western-derived elements of the Pakistani state to a Sharia-based
Islamic system. The modernist elite in Pakistan has, over time, conceded to
Islamist demands, in order to avoid any confrontation and to reduce the chances
of the Islamists making political gains. However, such a bargain has proved
counter productive, pushing the State further down the Islamization path.
Pakistan was carved out of British India for the minority Muslims concerned
about the prospect of being marginalised by the majority Hindu population.
The leadership of the movement for Pakistan, mostly from northern India and
elitist and feudal in orientation, used Islam in their mobilisation strategy to
attract the Muslim masses. During the course of the movement, the bogey of
Islamic-culture-in-danger was also raised to elicit stronger mass support and by
the time of the creation of Pakistan, Islam had become a unifying element for
the Muslims. However, once the state of Pakistan came into being, its main
architect, and its sole spokesman, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who claimed to have
carved it with the help of a type-writer, underplayed the Islamic dimension and
defined the basic institutions of the state in liberal and secular terms. However,
he passed away exactly 1 year and 29 days after Pakistan’s creation, before the
constitution was drawn up enshrining the principles he outlined in his address
to the nation on August 11, 1947.10 The leaders succeeding him were unable to
contend with the Islamist forces that were encouraged during the movement for
Pakistan. ‘‘What was the need of founding Pakistan if it were to be a secular
one?’’11, asked some of the conservative right wing leaders. As the debate on the
nature of the Pakistani state gathered momentum in the Pakistani Constitu-
tional Assembly, it soon became apparent in the ‘‘Objective Resolution’’12 of
the Pakistani Constitution in 1949 that Islam had entered the constitution as an
unalterable frame of reference.13 Even secular leaders like Ayub Khan and Z.A.
Bhutto had to insert ‘Islamic provisions’14 in the constitutions enacted during
their rule.

Islamisation leads to Talibanisation

Article 2 of the 1973 constitution declares Islam as the official state religion and
the preamble emphasises the point that sovereignty belongs to Allah. Article
 Fighting the Taliban 535

227 states that all ‘‘existing laws shall be brought in conformity with the
injunctions of Islam as laid down in the holy Qur’aan and Sunnah . . . and no
law shall be enacted which is repugnant to such injunctions’’ (Article 227). The
ulema (Islamic scholars) have played an officially recognised role in shaping the
Pakistani polity, including the writing of legislation.
The clergy has been accorded a constitutional place through the establish-
ment of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII). The CII was first introduced by
Field Marshall Ayub in his 1962 constitution and Ayub used his influence and
discretion to select only conformist clerics who would adopt a modernist line
and attest his policies. The constitution of 1973 also made constitutional
provision for the CII with a constitutional mandate to examine existing laws
and recommend ways of bringing them into conformity with Islam’s injunc-
tions. The constitution promised to make all laws conform to the principles of
Islam within ten years from the promulgation of the constitution. While Z.A.
Bhutto did not make any effort in this regard, the damage had been done and
the CII continues as a body prescribing conservative steps to be taken by
governments from time to time. This has exerted unnecessary pressure on the
government that at times has made use of the recommendations of the CII to
demonstrate their Islamic credentials.
During Zia-ul-Haq’s rule, the CII worked most enthusiastically and served as
Chief Advisory Council to the President, entrusted with the responsibility of
examining whether federal and provincial laws were in line with Islamic
principles. So far the CII has recommended repeal of 829 federal laws passed till
1977.15 Many more laws are currently under review. As a result of their
influence, Islamisation is, at least formally, the ultimate objective of the
constitution and the basis of the state’s legitimacy.
The attempt at Islamisation did not stop there. Zia-ul-Haq added Sharia
benches to Provincial courts and a Sharia appellate bench to the Federal
Supreme Court to decide matters concerning Islamic laws. These came to be
known as the Federal Shariat Court. Sharia education was added to university
education and an International Islamic University was established to offer
judges crash courses on Islamic jurisprudence, to train official mullahs, and to
emphasise research on Islamic history, politics and economics. During Zia’s
time, Islamisation efforts even spread to the criminal justice system. The penal
laws, criminal procedure and Evidence Act were also amended through
Presidential decrees/ordinances eroding the legal status of women.
Zia’s infamous Hudood ordinances sought to introduce medieval forms of
punishment like flogging, amputation, public stoning etc. With such symbolic
but pervasive Islamisation efforts the non-Muslim minorities were reduced to
‘dhimmis’16 of the medieval age. Even if the constitution gave them rights to
profess and practice their religion, in practice there was an overwhelming
majoritarian bias against minority sects like Ahmadiyas.17 In some cases, the
Christians were targeted through blasphemy laws brought in by Zia.
536 Ashok K. Behuria

It has been very difficult to repeal these Islamising provisions in Pakistan, as

can be seen in the efforts by Musharraf to moderate some provisions of the
Hudood ordinance to protect the rights of the women. It took Musharraf almost
eight years to venture into the terrain of the Mullahs over the issue of restoring
some women’s rights, encroached upon by the Islamist incursions during the
Zia era, signifying a gradual Islamisation of the Pakistani state and society.

Interpretations
The state with its modern trappings and liberal leadership has found it difficult to
fight the menace of Islamic radicalism and progressively the conservative lobby
has advanced. One interpretation could be that politics in Pakistan is dominated
by a minority group consisting of the political, military and bureaucratic elite
which is drawn from the feudal class or, as Hamza Alavi has suggested, from the
elite salariat18 Due to the slow pace of socio-economic development of the
Pakistani society and the apathy of the ruling elite towards the issue of creating
equal conditions for people to make social, economic and political mobility
possible, the political system in Pakistan is under strain from many sources.

Elite Competition?
One plausible explanation for the Islamic clergy’s desire for political power
could be their social composition. Ever since Pakistan was established a large
majority of the clergy came from the less prestigious social classes, unlike the
anglicised elite which invariably came largely from the feudal class. It was
calculated by the famous Pakistani economist, the late Mahbub ul Haq in the
mid-1980s that the ruling class in Pakistan was an exclusive group consolidated
through inter-linkages and confined to around 500 families. Apart from few
leaders like Qazi Hussain Ahmed, most of the mullahs have humble origins and
come from poorer areas of Pakistan.19
At a certain level it can be interpreted as elite competition. Due to the
unavailability of a consensual system of elite circulation (whereby different sets
of elite could change their positions at the top in a peaceful manner), they have
found it strategic to assert themselves through mobilisation of popular
constituencies around the theme of Islam-which has high emotive value given
the socio-economic backwardness of the people. However, this is not to deny
that competitive elite networking has made complex alliances possible and at
times the weakest group, with nuisance value and illegitimate coercive power,
has been seen to ally itself with the military elite in its quest for state power. It
has also been observed that this orthodox elite (the mullahs for instance) has
been very entrepreneurial and made good use of their small but vocal
and assertive power-base to keep themselves in circulation. The fact that the
most prominent among these conservative elites have been vulnerable to
 Fighting the Taliban 537

opportunistic offers, suggest that their success has been in direct proportion to
the willingness of the ruling elite of the time to accommodate them.20

The stakes of the Mullah

The mullah-military nexus21 which has been the theme of extensive research
both in and outside Pakistan, has made it tempting on the part of the military
elite, which has been one of the important constituents of state power, to make
use of the militant religious constituency in designing its foreign and domestic
policy. During the post-Afghan-Jihad days the use-value of this constituency
increased substantially and the military-dominated Pakistani state incorporated
its preferences into its Kashmir policy vis-à-vis India and in the bargain
tolerated the intense Sunni-Deobandi sectarian implications at the domestic
level. There was little realisation that these elements would come home to roost.
By the 1990s it was seen that they had indeed made their presence felt in the
tribal belt in Pakistan.
There is another element to militant Islam that has adopted the Taliban
model in Pakistan over the last decade. It has nested itself in the Pashtun
majority tribal areas in and around the federally administered tribal areas and
northern Baluchistan. Projecting themselves as the Pakistani Taliban they have
posed a tough challenge to Musharraf and the American forces in this virtually
unadministered terrain. They have also managed to spread into the adjoining
areas but with limited success and failed to penetrate into the Punjab and even
Sindh provinces, despite having a working base in Karachi facilitated by their
sectarian cousins. They have made inroads into Islamabad, as was witnessed in
the wake of the Red Mosque siege. It became possible to penetrate into the
capital, Islamabad, due to the gradual spread of jihadi mosques during General
Zia’s reign. Moreover, the leaders of these orthodox outfits, both militant and
moderate, have come from the Pashtun ethnic group. Fears are growing that if
Pakistan does not resolve its internal Taliban problem it may even encounter
Pashtun-religious opposition in NWFP and northern Baluchistan. The recent
resolution in the provincial assembly in NWFP to rename the province as
‘‘Afghania’’, must have instilled some fear into the administration.

Strains in the Mullah-Military Alliance

The current military-led government has tried to underplay the role of Islam in the
institutions of the Pakistani state. However, it is well-known that it had struck a
deal with religious forces before the elections in October 2002 and played a big
role in bringing disparate conservative political groups together to form the
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, better known as the MMA, (literally translated as the
United Council of Action), a grand coalition of religious-political parties
including Deobandi, Barelvi and Ahle Hadith Sunni groups as well as Shias.
538 Ashok K. Behuria

The government of the day, committed to ‘‘enlightened moderation’’, has

tried to engage the religious forces through dialogue, discussions and negotia-
tions over issues spanning from the women’s protection bill to deals with tribal
Islamist militants. Even if this has not ensured smooth relations between the
establishment and the MMA, the uneasy cohabitation has at least helped the
government in maintaining a democratic façade. It has also helped the MMA in
influencing the behaviour of the government in many ways.
If one analyses the several rounds of negotiations that Chaudhury Sujaat
Hussain (President of the ruling political party, the Pakistan Muslim League-
Quaid-e-Azam) had with the JUI-F leader Fazlur Rehman, one finds that the
original draft of the bill was substantially diluted to accommodate the wishes of
the MMA leadership. Even then the MMA was opposed to the deal. The
situation, as it remains to date, favours the military led government, yet the
Mullahs have the power to influence the decisions of the government especially
in matters concerning issues around social reform, gender rights, madrassa
education and religious issues.
In certain ways, tacit governmental patronage has also boosted the morale of
the MMA to the extent of passing a Shariat bill in the NWFP provincial
Assembly, similar to the 15th amendment initiated by Nawaz Sharif, discussed
earlier.22 At another level, the MMA, by acting as a buffer between the
government and the Islamist militants, has provoked the ire of the extremists.
Despite their willingness to work with the military during different periods of
Pakistan’s history, the religious-political forces had managed to retain their
support base in these areas. But this time, with the appearance of ultra-radical
conservative forces, the hold of the MMA over the Pashtun-dominated areas
may weaken. Alternately, sensing the popular pulse in these areas, the MMA
may seek to disassociate from the ruling establishment and raise its Islamisation
bogey all over again. The resignation of the JI chief Qazi Hussain in July 2007 is
an indication of a widening fault line within the MMA over whether or not to
support Musharraf’s policies in Pakistan.

Is roll-back possible?
There is a liberal argument that the Islamist tenor of the current constitution is
more apparent than real. In essence, the government chosen by the people of the
State, is the sovereign entity in Pakistan, for Allah had delegated all his
authority to Pakistan. Such an argument is often advanced by the liberal
constituency in Pakistan who claim that the silent majority of Pakistan are
against a militant version of Islam and that the plurality within Islam in
Pakistan would act as a defence against any move by any one version to
dominate the polity in Pakistan. It is also argued by many Pakistani liberals that
the largest province of Pakistan, the Punjab, will never come under the spell of
any such regressive force and will serve as a uniting force in Pakistan.
 Fighting the Taliban 539

However, such sanguine analysis is undermined by the state conceding space

to such regressive forces, even symbolically. The dominant elite of Pakistan
needs to redefine state institutions in liberal terms in order to keep Islam out of
the affairs of the State. The State, rather than working on how to make good
Muslims, ought to devote more time to liberal education, genuine reform of
existing madrassas and open up the political domain to allow the militant forces
to battle it out in the game of electoral politics, which will effectively deter their
enthusiasm and appeal. A closed political system with doctored elections and
unrepresentative rulers is a recipe for disaster. If the state makes an effort to
contain Islamic extremists through force alone, it may create a situation quite
similar to the those in Algeria, Turkey and even Indonesia.
Aware of the political value of Islam, General Musharraf has emphasised a
liberal interpretation of Islam. In the negotiations with the Maulanas of the Red
Mosque, it was reported that the government had tried to soften the stand of the
Maulanas by expressing its commitment to work towards a Sharia-based
political system in Pakistan. Shujaat Hussain and Ejaj-ul Haq (the late Ziaul-
Haq’s son), the mediators, emphasised that there was unanimity of opinion
between the Government and the Maulanas regarding the evolution of a Sharia-
based system in Pakistan, but that the methods could be different. In fact, as far
as the orientation of the government is concerned there seems to be a
tremendous reservoir of sympathy for the Islamist position among many
politicians belonging to the ruling faction, even if President General Musharraf
might be singing a different tune.
It has to be re-emphasised here that even if the rise of the Pakistani Taliban
has made the JUI and even the JI*the principal Sunni political parties within
/

MMA, look like moderates, there is basic agreement between the two regarding
the need to have Islamic Sharia-based rule in Pakistan. The moderating effects
of participation in the democratic political process wears off once they lose
government patronage. The temptation to bring in Islamic rule through
coercion is always present among enthusiastic supporters at the grassroots
level and this constituency will continue to provide the necessary oxygen for the
pro-Taliban Islamist militancy in the tribal belt. The Pakistani state faces a long
struggle, as far as fighting these elements are concerned. It may be true that such
militancy may not exert disintegrative pressure on the Pakistani state. However,
given the close nexus between the Taliban and other types of extremists like the
Deobandi Sunni sectarian elements and Kashmiri militants within Pakistan, the
very possibility of such autonomous but inter-connected armed militant groups
operating within Pakistan*even if they were to stay largely localised in the
/

Pashtun belt*is quite disturbing. Such forces may engage the state in a
/

perpetual confrontation with a regressive force, and contribute to the fragility of

the state machinery. This would make the army play a more central role and
further strengthen its hold on power in Pakistan.
The world at large ought to help Pakistan avert the danger of a Pakistan
chronically ‘‘at war with itself’’.23 This can be achieved by helping Pakistan
540 Ashok K. Behuria

revert to a participative political process where these assertive constituencies

would be compelled to try out their strength in the theatre of electoral politics
vis-à-vis other mainstream political parties which have traditionally performed
better in electoral contests. Simultaneously, the Pakistani state should initiate a
silent revolution to mainstream the far-flung tribal areas economically. By
connecting these areas to the heartland through all weather road networks,
greater penetration of political parties24 to these areas (the political parties are
not allowed to operate in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas,25 and by
providing the people with access to liberal education (because the literacy rate
in these areas is as low as 29.51% for males and 3% for women)26 and by
reforming the madrassa education system, the tide of Talibanisation that
Musharraf underlined in Kabul can be reversed.
The Pakistani state will also have to ‘‘rollback its paradigm’’27 of using
militancy for short-term gains in Kashmir, vis-à-vis India. In fact, this policy of
raising an unofficial armed group has boomeranged from when the Pakistani
state made use of Al Qaeda training centres to train its cadres. The ideology of
the Jihad guiding the militants in Kashmir morphed into an intensely sectarian,
Deobandi-Wahabi creed when it was made to interact with the Taliban and Al
Qaeda in the training camps in southern Afghanistan. The Jihad industry raised
by Osama Bin Laden and encouraged by the Taliban and Pakistani intelligence
has led to the production of many committed cadres for Jihad against everything
they consider un-Islamic, according to their narrow sectarian view-point. This
has also completely Talibanised the socio-political context in Pakistan.
The study by Kristian Berg Harpviken reveals that ‘‘traditional modes of
social organization’’28 play a central role in the making of non-state actors with
extensive war-making capacity in modern times. Even if the power structure in
the tribal areas has changed29 with substantial dilution of the authority of the
tribal elders/leaders and triumph of the tribal mullahs in the wake of the
prolonged propagation of jihadi culture since the initiation of Afghan Jihad in
the early 1980s, the traditional communitarian principles continue to determine
the nature of collective action in these societies. It would require tremendous
effort on the part of the state to transform these societies from war-making-
machines to forward-looking rule-bound political entities. The process of
transformation through increasing literacy, promoting participative local bodies
integrated with the larger political system and accommodating the competing
elite in the political process would require innovative socio-political and
economic strategies. The process is difficult but not impossible.

Notes
1. President Pervez Musharraf’s address to European Union’s Foreign Relation Committee at
Brussels on 15 September 2006 available at Bhttp://www.presidentofpakistan.gov.pk/Files
Speeches/ ForeignVisits/ 9182006110454PMEU%20Foreign%20Relation%20Committee%
20Speech.pdf (accessed 3 August 2007).
 Fighting the Taliban 541

2. Musharraf quoted by Jason Straziuso, ‘‘Musharraf Warns of ‘Talibanisation’ in Pakistan’’,

Associate Press Report, August 13, 2007, available at Bhttp://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?
section nation_world& id 5562347 (accessed 20 August 2007).
3. For a detailed discussion on Taliban’s rise see Gilles Dorronsoro, Revolution Unending:
Afghanistan, 1979 to the Present, New York: Columbia University Press, 2005, Ahmed
Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, IB Tauris,
London, 2000, Larry P. Goodson. Afghanistan’s Endless War: State Failure, Regional
Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban, University of Washington Press, Seattle & London,
2001, William Maley, Fundamentalism Reborn: Afghan and the Taliban, Vanguard Books,
1998, Kamal Matinuddin, The Taliban Phenomenon, Oxford University Press, Karachi,
1999, Peter Marsden, Taliban, War, Religion and New Order in Afghanistan, Zed Books
Ltd, London, New York, 1998.
4. The Islamic edicts issued by the Taliban immediately after they overran the Afghan capital
Kabul emphasised the following: a) compulsory wearing of Hijab (traditional Islamic dress
by Muslim women which covers their body from head to foot). Iranian burqa was
unacceptable. Male tailors cannot take measures of female bodies and sew clothes for
them. Women to be accompanied by men while going out of their homes. b) Banning of all
kinds of music and dance, playing of drums, c) No to gambling, idolatry, drugs addiction,
British and American hairstyles, riba (interest on loans), washing of clothes by women
upstream, keeping pigeons and playing with birds, sorcery and kite-flying. d) Men not to
shave beards, and pray five times a day. Ahmed Rashid provides the details of the Edicts in
the Appendix of his book Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia,
Tauris, London, 2000, pp. 218
219.
5. It has been observed by Gilles Dorrosoro, who spent considerable periods in Afghanistan
doing his research in the Summer of 2000 that, ‘‘several thousand soldiers of the Pakistani
regular army were sent to the front; their presence proved decisive in the taking of Taloqan, a
small town that Massoud had controlled since 1986 and whose loss is a direct threat to his
supply lines between Panjshir and Tajikistan’’. See Gilles Dorronsoro, ‘‘The World Isolates
Taliban’’, available on Bhttp://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/afgnstan/2001/0619
tali.htm (accessed 23 March 2007).
6. It has been attested by many researchers that pro-Taliban clerics like Sufi Mahammad (leader
of TNSM) and Shami-ul-Haq (leader of his own branch of JUI) even closed down their
madrassas in response to calls by Taliban in July 1999, for fresh recruits for their offensives
against the Northern Alliance and sent the students to join the Taliban war efforts. Larry
Gordon, bears it out when he states that, ‘‘in a fresh Taliban offensive in July (1999) about
five to eight thousand Pakistani volunteers joined Taliban. See Larry P. Gordon, note 3, pp.
82
83, also see Barnet R. Rubin, ‘Afghanistan under the Taliban’, Current History, Vol. 625,
p. 85.
7. December 2005, in Miramshah, North Waziristan, a video footage of a public execution of
(as the anchor in the video called them) some ‘‘criminals, drug pushers, bootleggers and
extortionists’’, with their bodies hung from poles, eyes gouged out, and cash stuffed into their
mouth brought back the memories of Taliban in Afghanistan in 1994. For detailed reports
see Zahid Hussain, ‘‘Terror in Miramshah’’, Newsline, April 2006, Declan Walsh, ‘‘Pakistani
Taliban take control of unruly tribal belt’’, The Guardian, March 21, 2006, Zahid Hussain,
‘‘Terror in Miramshah’’, Newsline, April 2006, Graham Usher, ‘‘The Pakistan Taliban’’,
Middle East Report, February 13, 2007, available online on Bhttp://www.merip.org/mero/
mero021307.html.
8. As per Jessica Stern, ‘‘If madrasahs supply the labor for ‘‘jihad,’’ then wealthy Pakistanis and
Arabs around the world supply the capital’’. In ‘‘Pakistan’s Jihad Culture, Foreign Affairs,
November
December 2000.
9. Text of the 15th Amendment Bill cited in Dawn (Karachi), October 10, 1998.
542 Ashok K. Behuria

10. In his inaugural address on August 11, 1947, Jinnah promised equal rights for all citizens
regardless of religion, caste or creed. He famously said: ‘‘If we want to make this great State
of Pakistan happy and prosperous we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being
of the people, and especially of the masses and the poor . . . you are free- you are free to go to
your temples mosques or any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may
belong to any religion, caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the state . . .
in due course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to Muslims- not
in a religious sense for that is the personal faith of an individual- but in a political sense as
citizens of one state’’. Bhttp://www.pakistan.gov.pk/Quaid/governor_g.htm (accessed 18
August 2007).
11. Maulana Maududi, founder of Jamiat-i-Islami had argued this way.
12. On March 12, 1949, the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan adopted a resolution moved by
Liaquat Ali Khan, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan. It was called the Objectives
Resolution. It proclaimed that the future constitution of Pakistan would not be modeled on a
European pattern, but on the ideology and democratic faith of Islam. Liaqat called it ‘‘the
most important occasion in the life of this country, next in importance only to the
achievement of independence’’.
13. An interesting analytical piece titled ‘‘Talibanisation of Pakistan’’, by Rafi Aamer, came up
recently in Dawn (Karachi), August 12, 2008, which also argues the same.
14. Ayub had to include Islamic clauses in the 1962 Constitution. These could not be challenged
in any court of law. The state was originally named the Republic of Pakistan, but the first
amendment added the word ‘‘Islamic’’ to the name. The word ‘‘Islam’’ and not ‘‘Quran and
Sunnah’’ was used in the Islamic clauses to give a liberal touch to the Constitution. The
Advisory Council of Islamic Ideology was introduced whose job was to recommend to the
government ways and means to enable Muslims to live their lives according to the teachings
of Islam.
15. ICG Asia Report N849, ‘‘Pakistan: The Mullahs and the Military’’, Islamabad/Brussels, 20
March 2003.
16. Non-Muslim minorities in an Islamic state were called Dhimmis and they were treated
differently and were discriminated against by the rulers.
17. Ahmadiyas regard Mirza Ghulam Ahmed of Qadian (in present day India) as a later day
Messiah who brought the message of Prophet Muhammad forward. Mainstream Islamic
sects like Sunni and Shia consider it heretical to accept anybody as a Messiah after
Muhammad because the Holy book accords the status of final Prophet to Muhammad alone.
Hardline Sunnis and Shias came together in the 1950s and then in the 1970s and launched a
movement in honour of the ‘finality of prophethood’ (Khatm-e-Nabuwat) and demanded
expulsion of Ahmadiyas from the fold of Islam. Bhutto brought about a constitutional
provision to deny Ahmadiyas the right to call themselves Muslims.
18. The salary earning class that emerged during the colonial period has been called a ‘salariat’
by the eminent political scientist from Pakistan, Hamza Alavi.
19. Jessica Stern argues correctly in her piece, Pakistan’s Jihad Culture: ‘‘Whereas wealthy
Pakistanis would rather donate their money than their sons to the cause, families in poor,
rural areas are likely to send their sons to ‘‘jihad’’ under the belief that doing so is the only
way to fulfill this spiritual duty. One mother whose son recently died fighting in Kashmir told
me she would be happy if her six remaining sons were martyred. ‘‘They will help me in the
next life, which is the real life,’’ she said.’’, Foreign Affairs, November
December 2000.
20. The tentative theorisation here has drawn upon the elite theory advanced by Vilfredo Paerto,
in his seminal work, The Mind and Society (4 vols.), 1935, and Gaetano Mosca, in his
famous work, The Ruling Class, University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor, 1958. The salient
issue is that there is no consensus on the process of power transition (which has been
alternatively called elite circulation) in Pakistan in spite of the fact that the constitution has
been in place for almost 35 years. There has been a temptation to override the constitution on
 Fighting the Taliban 543

the part of the military elite in active collusion with a small but assertive constituency of
orthodox mullahs from time to time. This is a marked feature of a highly inegalitarian and
feudal society struggling to adapt democracy as a framework for governance.
21. See Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, Washington: Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, 2005, Zahid Hussain, Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle
with Militant Islam, I.B. Tauris, distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, Hassan Abbas,
Pakistan: Drift into Extremism.
22. MMA leaders would maintain that their insistence on Sharia-based rule does not presage a
Taliban style rule in Pakistan. One of them would say ‘‘The Taliban had gained power after a
bloody conflict whereas the MMA is part of the political process and will employ a gradual
approach to total Islamisation of society as recommended by the Shariat Council’’. However
the conservative slant in their demand makes it unacceptable to the liberals in Pakistan’’. See
the discussion on ‘Implementing Sharia’, in ICG Report, note 15, See the quote from the ICG
interview with Hafiz Akhter Ali, NWFP minister for Religious Affairs and Auqaf, Peshawar,
3 January 2003, p. 29.
23. Zahid Hussain argues along these lines, in his book, Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with
Militant Islam, I.B. Tauris, distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
24. Bhttp://www.dni.gov/press_releases/Declassified_NIE_Key_Judgments.pdf.
25. Benazir Bhutto-led Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP), pleaded recently in a petition to the
Supreme Court, that the Political Parties’ Act, 1962, be extended to FATA to end its
‘‘political isolation’’. Editorial, ‘‘Ending Fata’s isolation’’, Dawn (Karachi), 01 August 2007.
26. Pakistani Government Statistics. Available at Bhttp://www.fata.gov.pk/index.php?link 9
(accessed 12 April 2007).
27. For example a perceptive observer of the Pakistani situation writes: ‘‘Today’s Wana is the
creation of yesterday’s Afghanistan . . . For the Pakistani State Nek Mohammad represents its
own creation. The State has to retake charge of its affairs and rollback that paradigm. But it
has to go easy; there are no quick-fixes here’’. Nasim Zehra, ‘‘State Reworks itself in Wana’’,
Daily Times (Lahore) April 29, 2004.
28. Kristian Berg Harpviken, devotes a lot of research to understand Taliban’s organisational
capability through collective action theory in the following paper: ‘‘Transcending Tradi-
tionalism: The Emergence of Non-State Military Formations in Afghanistan’’, Journal of
Peace Research, Vol. 34, No. 3, 1997, pp. 271
287.
29. Gilles Dorronsoro argues that the 1990s saw the triumph of religious authorities (the ulema)
and the marginalisation of the traditional elites in his book, Revolution Unending
Afghanistan, 1979 to the Present, translated by John King, New York: Columbia University
Press, 2005.