Saturday, April 11, 2009
Rahimullah Yusufzai
It was inevitable that Maulana Sufi Mohammad will leave Swat and even consider abandoning his peace mission if he didn't receive absolute cooperation from the government for enforcement of Nizam-e-Adl Regulation in the Malakand division, which includes Swat district, and Kohistan in Hazara region.
Sharia has been his goal for around three decades now and will remain so until he emerges successful. Thrice in 1994, 1999 and 2009 he was promised Sharia by the government of the day and on each occasion he felt betrayed. He is careful not to lose out again and this is the reason for his determined effort to force the government to bring Swat and its seven neighbouring districts under Islamic law through the enforcement of Nizam-e-Adl.
The elderly Sufi Mohammad along with his followers left Swat on April 9 after winding up his "peace camp" in Saidu Sharif. But he didn't go very far. Instead of heading for his native Lower Dir district, he has opted to stay in Amandarra in Malakand Agency, where the head office of his banned organization, Tanzim Nifaz Shariat-i-Mohammadi (TNSM), is located. This would give hope to the people of Swat and the ANP-led government in NWFP, both desperate to save the Swat peace accord, that Sufi Mohammad could be persuaded whenever the need arose to return to the violence-hit valley to play his role as a peacemaker.
It seems Sufi Mohammad will henceforth operate out of Amandarra near Batkhela, which is centrally located in Malakand division and isn't very far from the trouble spots of Swat, Buner and the two Dir districts, which upon separation were strangely given the English names of Upper Dir and Lower Dir by some dim-witted elites without realising that most people there would be more comfortable with some Pashto name. Before embarking on his Swat mission after the peace deal between him and the NWFP government on February 16, Sufi Mohammad and his supporters had set up a tented camp in Timergara, headquarters of Lower Dir, and stayed there for more than four months while demanding enforcement of Sharia in the region.
Staging demonstrations and setting up protest camps is nothing new for the octogenarian Sufi Mohammad. He relishes the idea and is forever ready to hit the road and pitch tents while organising peaceful protests. Once in the late 1990s, he blocked the Malakand Pass with hundreds of his bearded and black-turbaned followers swarming the hills and cutting off the region from the rest of Pakistan for days. On two occasions, though, he abandoned peaceful mode of protest and exhorted his followers to pick up the gun and fight. The first time it was in 1994-95, when his men embarked on an armed campaign in Swat, Bajaur and in the rest of Malakand division while demanding Sharia and captured the Saidu Sharif airport and other government installations and made 65 police officials, judges, civil servants, etc hostage. Sufi Mohammad later realised the gravity of the situation and helped the government end the fighting in Swat. As part of the bargain, he got the secular government of Benazir Bhutto to enact a special Sharia law, which subsequently turned out to be ineffective, for Malakand division. The second time that Sufi Mohammad acted rashly was in November 2001 when he led around 10,000 of his over-zealous but inadequately armed and trained followers to cross the border into Afghanistan and join the Taliban to fight the invading US forces and their Northern Alliance allies. One is still unable to understand why the Pakistan government made no effort to stop Sufi Mohammad and his followers, many of whom died fighting or were taken prisoner and then freed on payment of ransom to pro-US Afghan militias.
As things stand now, there can be no durable peace in Swat and the adjoining districts without involving Sufi Mohammad in the process. He is the one with whom the NWFP government concluded the February 16 peace deal. He is also the mediator between the government and the Swat Taliban headed by his son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah. And he is the guarantor of the peace deal. Perhaps never in the past events revolved round one person to this degree. In fact, the fate of the peace process in Swat now depends on the actions of this elderly cleric. And it isn't a reassuring thought that something could happen to Sufi Mohammad or he could end his role as a peacemaker and the fragile peace process in Swat could collapse. There are also other worrying facts with regard to the maulana. He doesn't believe in democracy and considers it un-Islamic. For Islamic reasons, he refuses to be photographed or sit in a room where pictures of human beings are displayed. While negotiating with government functionaries in the 1990s after his usual round of agitation, he would demand that photographs of the founder of the nation, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and others hanging in the room be temporarily removed. Everyone had to comply or else the maverick maulana would stage a walkout.
The centrality of his role for restoring peace in Swat and elsewhere in Malakand region has forced the hand of the beleaguered ANP-headed government in NWFP. It is growing impatient over the reluctance of President Asif Ali Zardari to sign the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation and is desperately urging him to do so at the earliest. Sufi Mohammad on his part has warned that President Zardari would be responsible for the consequences if the situation turned violent in Swat again. In fact, the president is facing pressure from all quarters. His PPP ally, the ANP, could pull out of the alliance if he refuses to sign the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation because their coalition government in NWFP had staked its reputation by promising this piece of Sharia law to Sufi Mohammad in return for his willingness to become the mediator and persuade the Swati Taliban to agree to peaceful solution to the conflict in Swat. The provincial government even hurriedly set up Qazi Courts in Swat following a deadline set by Sufi Mohammad and these courts still lack a proper legal cover that could only be provided once the president puts his signature to the law. The NWFP government is also facing pressure from the maulana to establish similar Qazi Courts, which by the way are staffed by qualified judges and not maulvis as some people believe, in other districts of Malakand division and in Kohistan.
President Zardari is also facing pressure from secular political forces and sections of the civil society not to sign the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation. The pressure mounted with the emergence of the videotape of a young girl being whipped by the Taliban in Swat. There is now some evidence that the incident did take place, though both the girl and the boy accused of having illicit relations and the villagers in Kabal area of Swat are now denying, certainly due to fear of the militants, that they were flogged. The NWFP government too has denied the incident and termed the emergence of the videotape at this stage part of a conspiracy to sabotage the Swat peace process.
There is also international pressure on President Zardari not to sign the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation into law. The US has always been critical of peace deals with militants and it found fault with the Swat agreement. One US official even accused Maulana Fazlullah of sending fighters to Afghanistan to fight American, NATO and Afghan government forces. This was the first time that such an allegation was made as Swat was normally considered as having lesser interest for the US owing to the fact that no cross-border infiltration could take place from a place that didn't share border with Afghanistan. The president as we know is neither able to withstand internal pressure after having agreed to restore the deposed judges following the long march nor capable of deflecting external arm-twisting done by the likes of Richard Holbrooke and General Mike Mullen.
However, President Zardari would have to take into account the wishes of the people of Swat, who are desperate for peace, and the demand of his ally, the ANP, for quick enforcement of the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation. The military too is standing by the peace deal between the NWFP government and Sufi Mohammad. The president would not want to be blamed for creating hurdles in the restoration of durable peace in Swat. In fact, his argument that he will sign the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation once permanent peace is established in Swat isn't convincing enough because all other stakeholders insist that enforcement of the new regulation is necessary for bringing normalcy in the valley. Still the president and both the federal and provincial governments should insist that the militants have to gradually disarm and stop intimidating the population not only in Swat but also in Buner, Dir and elsewhere. A timeframe for the disarmament of the militants and withdrawal of the Pakistan army troops could be agreed upon as part of a deal.
As for Sufi Mohammad, he probably will not pullout of his peace deal with the government after having come so far in playing a crucial role in returning Swat to normalcy. Having realised that his goal of Sharia is now within reach, he is expected to stay involved in the Swat peace process until he realises that the task is beyond his means.
The writer is resident editor of The News in Peshawar. Email: rahimyusufzai @yahoo.com
No comments:
Post a Comment