KALAM: In the past few years, Pakistan’s Swat valley has been occupied by Islamic insurgents, undergone a bruising counter-offensive by the army and then flooded by waters that washed away acres of fruit orchards and steeply terraced fields.
In October last year, the valley, which lies about 250km north of the capital Islamabad, was again in the global spotlight when Islamic gunmen shot schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai.
Now, as villagers try to piece together shattered lives, the military is coming under pressure to talk peace with the Taliban, a ruthless Pakistani offshoot of the Islamic radical movement of the same name in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Civilian Pakistani leaders elected in May want to open a dialogue with the homegrown militants set on overthrowing the nuclear-armed state. They say the local people are fed up with the violence and that any talks will be legitimised by US efforts to promote peace with the Afghan Taliban.
But the powerful military, which has spent years chasing the Pakistan Taliban into ever-more remote hideouts, is in no mood to negotiate with militants who have killed thousands of soldiers and who they say cannot be trusted. Some villagers back that stand.
“(The Taliban) doesn’t accept the government’s writ, they are not faithful to the constitution, how can a political party talk to them?” said Abdul Rehman, an elder in the village of Kalam, a former tourist hotspot high in the Swat valley and ringed by snow-capped peaks of the Hindu Khush. The village is famous for repelling Taliban attacks.
“We forced them away, first on our own, then with the help of the army,” Rehman said.
Pakistan’s military leaders are at pains to distinguish between the Afghan Taliban, to which Pakistan maintains ties and which they argue can be seen as fighting against occupation, and its local imitators who they see as domestic terrorists.
The Pakistani Taliban pledges allegiance to Mullah Mohammad Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban but Omar is careful not to be seen to attack the Pakistani state. The Pakistani Taliban suddenly sacked its spokesman on Tuesday amid signs of strained ties between the groups.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his prominent rival Imran Khan both offered to talk to the Pakistani militants while campaigning for May’s federal and provincial elections. While Sharif won the federal elections, Khan’s party emerged victorious in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the province that includes Swat Valley and remains a hotbed of Pakistani Taliban activity.
“For the last nine years we have relied on the army to bring peace, but instead the situation got worse,” Khan said last month during a visit to Peshawar, the province’s capital. “It’s now time for politicians to resolve the issue.”
But there is no easy solution.
Most of the militants seek refuge in the neighbouring Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) — districts strung along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan and run by central writ — and the provincial government cannot control the process.
Sharif’s federal government can only do so much. Pakistan’s military largely has a free hand regarding internal security. It is the army, its intelligence agencies and the Taliban itself who will decide whether to talk or fight.
So far, the military has shown no inclination to relax an offensive many officers feel they can win.
Saifullah Khan Mahsud, an expert on the situation in FATA, says the army believes it has the Pakistani Taliban on the back foot and is biding time for a fatal blow in border areas like North Waziristan, where the militants are holed up. “At the end of the day it is the military stance that is going to prevail,” he said.
REUTERS
