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The Eurasian Politician - January 2004
By: Anssi Kullberg, 14 Jan. 2004
The attention of world media is concentrated among the strikes against US troops, Iraqi policemen and innocent civilians in Iraq, committed by extremists, many of whom appear to be foreigners arriving through Syria and Iran. Radical anti-American extremists - both radical Islamists and extreme socialists - are now flocking to the fronts of Iraq and Afghanistan and concentrating their energy in media-visible but militarily pathetic low-intensity warfare against soft and semi-soft targets. The main objective of this activity is to weaken the home front of the "war against terrorism" in Western countries by using Western media to generate fear and anxiety. However, at the very same time, the positive and stabilizing effect of the US-led operations both in Afghanistan and in Iraq is clearly visible in both the regions - not least in the amount of the millions of returned and returning refugees - although of course problems cannot be solved overnight.
It is to be expected that the amount of infiltration of foreign extremists into Iraq will slowly decrease by this year, although it is clear that there will probably never be a total end for such strikes, as the modern media culture makes them relatively useful. Apart from media image, the actual security situation in both Afghanistan and Iraq has steadily improved, as has been verified by our fact-finding missions to these areas this year.
Largely invisible for the world media attention, a crucial struggle "for hearts and minds" continues in the core fronts against al-Qaida and its associates. One of these fronts is the arid and mountainous "tribal belt" along the long and vague border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the near future, we can except some very important advances in the struggle against terrorists there, which may even lead to the capture of the al-Qaida leaders, Usama bin Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The reason of these expectations was reported by several Pakistani sources in the second week of January, soon to be followed by Stratfor and other Western analytical news agencies. Already in December, President Pervez Musharraf's administration managed to achieve a deal with the Islamist opposition umbrella, Muttahida Majlis-e Amal (MMA). The deal with the MMA ended the parliamentary boycott of the Islamists, and will serve to decrease the agitation of hatred against Musharraf and the West in the two poorest provinces of Pakistan, the North-Western Frontier Province (NWFP) and Baluchistan, where the MMA gained victory in the autumn 2002 general election.
Musharraf's relationship with the Islamists has been stormy [see Christian Jokinen's article in The Eurasian Politician in December], and although the parties of the two former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto have accused Musharraf's "King's Party" of playing the Islamists against PPP and PML, it is clear for objective observers that it was Musharraf's takeover that actually meant a major turn in Pakistan's policy towards radical Islamism. While Bhutto's PPP (minister of interior Nasirullah Babar) was responsible for the original decision for shifting Pakistan's support to the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, Nawaz Sharif was, during his reign, consistently moving Pakistan even more to the direction of an Islamist state. One of the crucial motivations for Musharraf's coup d'état was indeed that Nawaz was about to make himself a religious leader. Musharraf's coup, from the very beginning, meant distancing from all Islamist policies, cutting out support from the Taliban and from the radical jihadists in Kashmir [most of the Kashmiri separatists are not radical jihadists, but moderate Sufi Muslims], and trying to get the madrasa network into some government control. Since the September 11, 2001, Musharraf's pro-Western policy was also finally recognized in the West.
The main reason for the Islamist success in NWFP and Baluchistan in autumn 2002 was the fact that the Islamists had, for the first time in Pakistan's history, managed to form a united electoral alliance, instead of the eternal sectarian disputes that had plagued the Islamist political field for a long time. Forming the MMA thus greatly increased the Islamists' chances to gain some power, since for ordinary voters it was now much easier (and much more obliging in many of the conservative remote districts) to vote for the "Book Party", which name the MMA got from its electoral symbol, a book (generally interpreted as the Holy Koran).
However, it would be a mistake to interpret the formation and success of the MMA solely as a negative phenomenon, because getting rid of the worst sectarian extremes and forming an umbrella that has appeared relatively lasting, together with the share that the Islamists will get from local and provincial power - especially in the NWFP and Baluchistan - will also inevitably call for moderation and more pragmatic approach to daily political issues. Responsibility and sharing power means that the Pakistani Islamists cannot base their agenda solely on those issues which we usually fear most, like oppression of women, strict religious rules on most absurd issues which sometimes have nothing to do with the teachings of Islam, and of course general hate-mongering against the US, the Western influences, and President Musharraf's policy.
Most of the Islamists are not irresponsible extremist fanatics, but simply pious and conservative-minded Muslims who have many legitimate social concerns. It can already be seen that Pakistan's Jamiat-i Islami has become a moderate Islamist party. However, this does not eliminate the fact that radical groupings, though on the margins of the political field, continue to compensate their "minor voting power" with "disproportionate fire power". During last year alone, there were several attempts against Musharraf's life, and also the terrorist attacks in Pakistan have showed that Musharraf's pro-Western foreign policy and reformist domestic policy were targets of radical Islamist terrorists. There has been a clear need to get the support of also the moderate Islamists and ethnic Pashtuns behind the war against terrorism.
Thus, the deal with the Islamists greatly contributed to Musharraf's ability to maneuver in the very conservative Pashtun-dominated NWFP, which was proved by the truce in the first week of January with some of the Pashtun tribes in the Tribal Agencies of the region bordering Afghanistan. The role of the NWFP, or Pashtunistan, is very important, because a clear majority of the population of this geographically huge province consists of Pashtuns (a.k.a. Pathans, Pakhtuns) who are also the largest ethnic group of Afghanistan. Many Pashtuns and other Pakistanis indeed consider "Afghan" a synonym of "Pashtun", as Afghanistan's other ethnic groups, the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, the Hazaras and so on, are only weakly represented in Pakistan, having stronger cultural ties with Turkestan.
The Pashtuns grew bitter against Musharraf, because when he came to power, he stopped Pakistan's support to the Taliban movement of Afghanistan, which was essentially a Pashtun movement. Pashtun bitterness was further increased when Musharraf, in autumn 2001, joined the US-led war against terrorism, meaning the rapid collapse of the Taliban movement, which had been protecting the terrorist organization al-Qaida.
The Pak-Afghan border, also known as the Durand Line, is artificial, porous and in field often practically invisible, and because the population on both sides of the border consists of the same Pashtuns, it has been easy for the al-Qaida agents and Taliban remnants to hide and operate in the frontier region, moving across the border whenever hunted on one side. This has enabled continuous low-intensity resistance against both the Pakistani troops operating in south, and against the US-led coalition troops operating in Afghanistan. Clashes with al-Qaida terrorists and Taliban fighters have been regular both in Pakistan's Tribal Agencies (where Pakistani policemen are being killed almost on a weekly basis) and in the Khost and Paktia provinces of Afghanistan.
The situation has been further complicated by the fact that part of the NWFP belongs to the so-called Tribal Agencies, which enjoy very wide autonomy. This has prevented efficient operations by Pakistani law-enforcement bodies in these areas. The Khyber Agency, covering the Pakistani side of the legendary Khyber Pass, has been the calmest and best controlled of the Tribal Agencies, but even there the Pakistani police have to move in armored vehicles. The Pashtuns are living traditionally in large compounds resembling fortresses, with watchtowers and barbed wire. It seems men only leave the compounds armed up to teeth, and women only wearing burkha. However, inside the fortresses, women are free to make-up, and men are watching Baywatch from television. Public matters of the tribal areas are decided in tribal councils, jirgas.
Pashtun resistance against all external interference into their business is fierce, which has been experienced in the past by the British, the Russians, as well as the Pakistani government. For many Pashtuns, Pakistan, which is ruled mainly from Punjab, represent almost as unpopular a "colonial administration" as did the British India and the Soviet Union. When Pakistan tried to install electrometers in the tribal areas, the Pashtuns installed heavy machine guns and anti-tank missiles on the hilltops and informed the Pakistani authorities that they were not going to pay for electricity. Ever since, Pakistan has let electricity flow to the Tribal Agencies for free, as Islamabad considered it better that "progress" would penetrate the Pashtun areas through electricity (including mass media), than if the areas would isolate themselves totally from the outside world, ending up in the Taliban type of solution.
In the Afghan-Pakistani frontier region, al-Qaida's activity has been concentrated in the remote Waziristan, which is divided into two Tribal Agencies - South and North Waziristan. It is here that the clashes between Pakistani police and al-Qaida terrorists have been fiercest and most regular, and where lots of myths have also been generated - including that of "Chechen" presence, although it proved to actually mean Uzbeks, who had crossed from Afghanistan. [Not a single Chechen has been found fighting on al-Qaida or Taliban side in Afghanistan or Pakistan's tribal areas. All the news pieces on the issue have proved to be either purposeful disinformation or due to general ignorance - in the latter case usually referring to Uzbeks.]
The Wazirs are one of the influential Pashtun tribes - the Pashtun nation is divided into several important tribes, like Wazirs, Wardaks, Zadrans etc. - and now it seems that at least the influential Ahmadzai clan of the Wazir tribe has agreed on co-operation with Musharraf's administration against the Taliban and al-Qaida. The Ahmadzai are influential both in Pakistan's NWFP and in Afghanistan, which gives the truce quite good prospects for efficient operations against the al-Qaida. At the same time, co-operating with influential Pashtun tribes prevents the disastrous scenario of all the Pashtun population turning against Musharraf and against the anti-terrorist operations.
For more than two years already, Pakistan's troops have operated against al-Qaida also in the Tribal Agencies, both alone and co-operating with American agencies, but these operations have been constantly facing troubles with the fierce resistance of the local Pashtun population, thus endangering the struggle for the "hearts and minds" among the locals. Pashtun anger against anti-Taliban war and Musharraf's reformism have given the terrorists an advantage of moving among the locals like Mao's guerrilla fish in the water of local population. Pashtun tribal elders have been swearing death to Musharraf, accompanied by radical Islamist mullahs. Now, however, it may be that the Musharraf administration has finally gained blessing of at least some influential Pashtun tribal leaders to expel the al-Qaida from its last regional fortress.
At the best, this move might turn to be crucial for capturing Usama bin Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri - taking that they would still hide in this area and not somewhere else - because eminent Pashtun co-operation will also mean radical increase in the amount of useful intelligence, of informants, and loss of al-Qaida agents' ability to exploit Pashtun family loyalties. If bin Ladin is out there, he will be sleeping very badly in the coming months.
Of course this does not mean an end to the global terrorist threat, since al-Qaida has been busy to disperse its cells around the world, and to infiltrate many other terrorist organizations in order to unite them into a war against the United States and its allies. Terrorism will resist as a fashion of political extremism as long as the functioning of world politics and media make it cost-efficient and beneficial for its users.
Police, intelligence and military victories are of course important on the tactical and operational levels of the war against terrorism. However, in long term and on strategic level, the struggle must be won as an ideological battle: the war against terrorism is essentially a new Cold War, an ideological struggle, where Western people as well as Muslims must stand consistent in defence of free and democratic political culture. Terrorists will be defeated when mass fear, distributed by media, can no longer shake the foundations of democratic societies and influence their policy-making.
Radical Islamism, one of the suitably antagonist ideologies for terrorist purposes (along with radical socialism and radical nationalism), will be best contained by clearly siding with its opponents in the "Islamic civil war". Islamic reformism, conservative Islam and even moderate Islamism should all be seen more constructively than is being done today. Employing the dangerous "civilization" model and aiding anti-Muslim regimes will only benefit radical Islamists to gain power within Islamic societies. It is Muslims we must support against radical Islamism - not those who oppress Muslims.
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The author is a researcher of conflicts and terrorism in the Contemporary History department of the University of Turku , Finland. He has lived and worked in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and made fact-finding trips to the tribal areas, too.