The irony is that it has been either the Malik or the state that patronized the Mulla enabling him to enhance his personal wealth and social authority to the extent that he could challenge at will the power of both the Malik and the state.
Pakistan’s north-western frontier, also called Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is up in flames, again. ‘Again,’ because this region has had a history of rebelling against the authority of state. In literary folklore, these tribal areas are called ‘Yaghistan,’ which means uncontrollable, unmanageable or simply the ‘land of the rebellious.’ Today, hardly any Pakistani or foreigner can dare to visit it. The situation was somewhat similar a century ago, when Colonel Brazier Creagh of the India army during his travels in this region in 1893-94 observed: “When we went to the frontier it was called ‘Yaghistan’ (plundering land); it was a forbidden land… it was impossible to go [inside]; and if you did your bones would be left there.”
Although FATA does have elected representatives in the Pakistani parliament yet the unchallenged voice from there is of Taliban, who claim to be the ‘religious men’ bent upon the imposition of their brand of religious order throughout the country. This raises an important question as to who has actually wielded the real authority there. Mullas or Maliks i.e. religious or tribal leaders. One argument is that the tribal power structure establishes the authority of Malik and not the Mulla. The other argument is that both are competing institutions which legitimize each other in the sense that Mullas approve the institutional authority of ‘jirgas’ headed by the Maliks whereas the Maliks approve the role of Mullas as the ‘social guardians’ of the society.
The authority of the Pakistani state is as limited there as was that of the colonial British power. The British tried to assert control through the Maliks but then no tribal leader could stand up as the sole authority over all tribes. This power vacuum has been filled by the Mullas. Two examples may illustrate this point. The British tried to exert control over the Wazirs and Mahsuds through treaties with their Maliks but on the instigation of Faqir of Ipi, these very tribesmen defied the commitments of their Maliks by attacking the British. How the authority of Mulla was more powerful than that of Malik could be imagined from the incident in which when a British girl, Molly Ellis was abducted by Ajab Khan Afridi, the British officer Colonel Bruce secured her release through the good offices of Mulla Mahmud Akhunzada and not a Malik.
With control over the means of propaganda and backed by the armed ‘lashkars,’ the Mullas set out on their primary agenda of assuming power in the name of religious reform. What we hear now from TTP’s head Mulla Fazlullah or earlier on from Mulla Sufi Mohammad is a repetition of what their predecessors did in FATA in the name of ‘amr-bil maruf wa nahi anal munkir’ (promotion of virtue and prevention of vice).
How did the Mulla acquire such a decisive influence? The irony is that it has been either the Malik or the state that patronized the Mulla enabling him to enhance his personal wealth and social authority to the extent that he could challenge at will the power of both the Malik and the state. The Mughal emperors Jehangir and Aurangzeb patronized the religious leaders such as Mulla Asiri, Shaykh Pir, etc. to use them in establishing the writ of the state. Similarly, Dost Mohammad, the Amir of Afghanistan in his military campaign against the Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh in 1835 enlisted the support of the Mullas of tribal areas, who not only legitimized the battle as a ‘jehad’ but also sent a large number of their students and adherents to the battle at Peshawar. In return, Dost Mohmmad rewarded the Mullas, particularly one Akhund (a title of respect for the learned) Abdul Ghaffur with so much land in Swat, Lundkhwar and Mardan that he could run a ‘langarkhana’ (community kitchen and quarters) that fed 500 men a day and generated sufficient wealth that enabled his grandson Miangul Abdul Wudud to establish the state of Swat, seven decades later.
The prestige of Mullas increased because of their ability to act as arbitrators in intra and inter-tribal disputes due to which they were also granted permanent privately owned lands by the local rulers. These material means allowed many of them such as Hadda Mulla, Haji Sahib Turangzai, Mulla Chaknawar, Sandaki Mulla, Babra Mulla, etc to first maintain large retinues and later raise armed ‘lashkars’ to enforce their decisions during the conflicts. The more imaginative such as Mulla Powindah created an independent ‘dak’ network among the tribes under his influence as well as up to the far off cities of Peshawar and Lahore. Such informal networks were so effective that despite a British ban on carrying letters and newspapers to or from the Tribal Areas, several newspapers from British –India such as ‘Zamindar’, ‘Al Hilal’, etc were smuggled to be read publicly in the mosques.
How did the Mulla acquire such a decisive influence? The irony is that it has been either the Malik or the state that patronized the Mulla enabling him to enhance his personal wealth and social authority to the extent that he could challenge at will the power of both the Malik and the state.
With control over the means of propaganda and backed by the armed ‘lashkars,’ the Mullas set out on their primary agenda of assuming power in the name of religious reform. What we hear now from TTP’s head Mulla Fazlullah or earlier on from Mulla Sufi Mohammad is a repetition of what their predecessors did in FATA in the name of ‘amr-bil maruf wa nahi anal munkir’ (promotion of virtue and prevention of vice). Those who feel aghast at the breaking of TV sets, burning of video shops or more serious corporal punishments today by the Taliban need to read scholar Sana Haroon’s seminal research entitled ‘Frontier of faith’ to find out how the Mullas confiscated the valuables and burned the houses of those, who refused to bow to their religious edicts and political directives. To extend their power in the tribal lands of India and Afghanistan, they resisted tooth and nail the authority of the British and the Afghan states. How menacing was their threat could be gauged from the letter written by the ruler of Afghanistan, Amir Abdur Rahman to the British authorities in 1897: “Just as in the old days of Europe the popes used to profess to be the sole disposers of heaven and hell, and the people accepted the word of worthless priests so too these Mullas claim to possess the same power…. For fourteen years they raised every part of Afghanistan against me… till thousands of men perished on both sides…”
The calls of ‘jehad’ have echoed the tribal areas many a time. In their religious observance and in its promotion during the last two centuries, the Mullas of FATA have generally followed the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidya ‘tariqa’ or method based on the teachings of Sheikh Ahmed Sirhindi also known as Mujaddad Alf Sani and his successors Shah Waliullah and Syed Ahmed Shaheed of Rai Bareli. Before martyrdom at the Battle of Balakot in 1831, Syed Ahmed had developed a close relationship with Akhund Abdul Ghaffur of Swat and the latter had not only kept those ‘mujahidin’ under his protection that survived the battle of Balakot but also continued Shah Waliullah’s philosophy in the form of the ‘Tariqa-i-Muhammadiyya’ movement that put emphasis on the strict observance of the word of the Quran and the authenticated Hadith. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Fazal Wahid known as Haji Sahib Turangzai went to Haj in the company of the ulema of Deoband and met Haji Imdadullah, a member of the so-called Wahabi Movement in Mecca and took ‘bait’ to continue the mission of religious revivalism as espoused by Syed Ahmed of Bareli.
The British adopted a policy of carrot and stick to tackle them. To woo the tribesmen from the influence of Mullas, they propped up the Maliks as an alternative pillar of power through generous distribution of funds. How money works wonders became visible during World War II, when several hostile Mullas such as Mulla Powindah Fazal Din and Shewa Mulla declared open support to the British against the Germans…
In this regard, the Mullas have shown a propensity to be manipulated by the outside forces. If the religious radicals of FATA are sustained by funds from abroad or are housing foreign militants, today; it is just a case of history repeating itself. The ‘Jamat-i-Mujhaidin’ sponsored by the ulema of Darul Uloom Deoband had sent hundreds and thousands of non-Pakhtun Mujahidin recruits from all over India into FATA which were trained and settled by the local Mullas, in particular Mulla Sandaki and Haji Turangzai, the latter is believed to have settled at least 120 families of the members of ‘Jamat-i-Mujahidin’. Funds and weapons began to flow into FATA from India and Afghanistan. In just six months, three thousand rupees and over three hundred rifles from India and about sixty thousand rupees from the Afghan government of Amir Habibullah were funneled for the realisation of the objective of ‘Jamat-i-Mujahidin’ which according to Maulana Hussain Ahmed Madni, a top leader of Deoband was to kick out the British from the subcontinent by the attacks of a revolutionary army of ‘mujahidin’ in which the tribesmen of Kalat and Makran were to attack Karachi, the recruits from Ghazni (Afghanistan) were to attack Quetta and the Mohmands and Mehsuds were to attack Peshawar. The conspiracy was busted by the British but the Afghan governments continued to meddle in the Tribal Areas by supplying cash and weapons to the Mullas throughout the 1920s and ‘30s. For instance, it is on record that Babra Mulla, Mulla Chaknawar, Haji Turangzai and several others were sent pistols, rifles and cash for personal use as well as grants to perform Haj and build mosques and madrasas in FATA.
The British adopted a policy of carrot and stick to tackle them. To woo the tribesmen from the influence of Mullas, they propped up the Maliks as an alternative pillar of power through generous distribution of funds. How money works wonders became visible during World War II, when several hostile Mullas such as Mulla Powindah Fazal Din and Shewa Mulla declared open support to the British against the Germans whereas those, who continued to resist the government by armed ‘lashkars’ and guerilla raids on state’s forces and installations were attacked on the ground and bombed from the air first by the Royal Air Force (RAF) between 1934 and ’36 and later on by the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) in 1948, particularly to quell the intransigent Faqir of Ipi in the Tochi Valley. The tragedy bedeviling FATA has much deeper historical roots; the only difference, now, is that the actors are new but the script is definitely old.
