One reason militant Islam became increasingly potent as the war on terror wore on was the inability of those confronting it to understand its deeper dynamics. First the Americans failed to differentiate between Afghanistan’s Taliban regime and small al Qaeda pockets allegedly responsible for 9/11, destroying the government and killing thousands of civilians. Some al Qaeda Arabs got killed, some fled, and the war turned into a long guerilla conflict with Taliban insurgents fighting foreign occupants. Right from the beginning, the war began to drift from its mission – 9/11, its perpetrators, and its victims.
Then in Iraq, where Saddam’s Baath Party had long kept a lid on sectarian sensitivities through its mukhabbarat services, and never allowed al Qaeda tendencies anywhere near the country, it took the Americans some years to understand just how Salafi militants were able to turn the tables not long after President Bush declared military victory. But in going after IEDs and suicide bombers, they ignored funding and arms sources of different groups that operated independently yet in similar ways. And when they did explore foreign hands, they linked Iran with al Qaeda, Saddam with the Salafis, taking another couple of years to arm moderate Sunni tribes and slowly flush out militants. That too unraveled almost as soon as they left.
And in Syria, they embraced, funded and armed, same al Qaeda groups they fought and droned in AfPak. It would be another three years, more than a hundred thousand dead, and millions raped, maimed and made homeless, before they, and the Israelis, would begin to understand the price of befriending the Saudis. Only now a slow realisation seems setting in that petrodollar jihadis pose a far graver threat to their interests than the old Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis. Hence the gentle thaw with Tehran.
Pakistan faces a similar perception problem. Despite tens of thousands of deaths, the true nature of the TTP is still lost on much of the population. Even a regular journalistic exercise reveals that despite appearances, they do not owe real allegiance to Mullah Omer’s Afghan Taliban. They were, in fact, the outcome of a split between Omer’s men and the Arabs they lost their government protecting. Once Kabul had fallen and the insurgency underway, it seems Omer forbade hordes fleeing across the border from confronting the Pakistani military. No doubt he counted on his old contacts to provide a degree of protection.
But al Qaeda had more expansionist designs, and was able to exploit tribal grievances and Pashtun appetite for foreign funds to stitch together the multi party TTP conglomerate. Initially a strained working relationship existed, with Afghan Taliban borrowing militias from the Pakistani chapter for cross border raids, but with the fight expanding in Pakistan, differences increased.
The Pakistani military’s much criticised, and misunderstood, Good Taliban policy comes from these days. Intelligence agencies supported tribal commanders that agreed not to fight, regardless of their activities in Afghanistan. Subsequently Bajaur strongman, and former TTP number-2, Molvi Faqeer was mobilised to initiate ceasefire with the Mehsuds dominating the umbrella group, and South Waziristan’s Mullah Nazeer was armed and assisted in driving out Uzbek militants and chastising similar potent groups.
Pitting insurgent groups against each other, and pushing for negotiated settlements from within, is traditionally considered good counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy, but since Pakistan’s good boys continued to play in Afghanistan, the Americans got angry, and initiated a savage media and military offensive on the good Taliban. Soon, Mullah Nazeer was droned, undoing years of work that finally brought peace to SW, and Molvi Faqeer was arrested by the Americans on a visit to Afghanistan.
Pakistani intelligence has long claimed the TTP has become a proxy force for Afghanistan’s NDS and Indian intelligence. And when the Lal Masjid operation led to the formation of Punjabi Taliban, which were former government proxies, Pakistan was confronted with a rapidly strengthening insurgency that now boasted presence across the length and breadth of the country. Funded and armed by Pakistan’s enemies, their sharia guise is a tool that Saudi, Pakistani and American intelligence first experimented with, very successfully, in the Soviet jihad.
Every time they cry sharia, they are in fact buying time. And whenever they bend towards talks, they end up recalibrating their funding and arming routes. The Pakistani government, and right-leaning population, is mistaken in taking their religious inclination at face value. Their targeting of soft civilian targets, sectarian minorities, and kidnapping for ransom have alienated all segments of society except the religious right. With their foreign patrons bolstering their position in fata, and their Punjabi brethren threatening savage Allah-Akbar attacks in urban centres, the government’s talks offer is bound to fail. The only way of ensuring successful negotiations is first smashing their funding and arming arrangements, then driving them into a corner militarily, and assuming a position of strength for the government.
