Where it all started
With fresh intel from Zarb-e-Azb pointing to Bajaur, and talk of a targeted military sweep of the agency, the local jirga’s success in leveraging indigenous peace committees and getting the military to postpone another incursion is beneficial on two counts. One, it delays, at least, more unintended consequences and more refugees. And two, more importantly, it gives the local tribal structure a greater, more significant role within the COIN (counterinsurgency) framework. Clearly, NW’s spillover has been instructive. And it is for good reason that military and intelligence officials have seen fit to trust tribal strategy for the time being; which means local militias will man the border, patrol villages, and remove TTP, especially foreign, militants from their areas.
Bajaur’s significance is easily forgotten in the many twists and turns of the long war against the TTP. It was here, not in north or south Waziristan, that the TTP multi-party conglomerate was first stitched together by al Qaeda’s financial largess following their (Arabs’) split with Mulla Omer’s Afghan Taliban. And it was here, in 2010, that intelligence officers reached a ceasefire arrangement with former TTP number-2 Molvi Faqeer – one of the so called good Taliban – that lasted for more than a year. There was chatter at the time that Faqeer had gathered a group of like-minded commanders and was trying to persuade Hakeemullah into a negotiated end to the fighting. What followed is still hazy, but a number of good Taliban suddenly departed from the scene – Mulla Nazeer killed in a drone strike and Molve Faqeer captured in Afghanistan – and the peace in Bajaur was broken.
It was, however, at the same time that peace committees were formed. And thought their members suffered endlessly from TTP persecution in their early days, it is again these committees that are being leveraged to ‘cleanse’ Bajaur once and for all. If this experiment – of local militias working under military patronage – proves successful, an important precedent will be set; one based on building on previous policies. The government should give this process a try and preferably contain the situation with minimal violence. If the resistance persists, however, then there is only one way to go, that is, an extension of Zarb-e-Azb into Bajaur.
