The Nizam-e-Adl Regulation 2009 (NAR) (Justice System) for Malakand Division, NWFP, which includes the state of Swat, is a hugely controversial system of so-called Islamic laws of justice that is based on a highly dubious “peace accord” between the NWFP government of the Awami National Party and a small religious outfit (Tehreek-e-Nifaze-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) led by an aging warrior, Sufi Mohammad.
There is bitter controversy over what is Islamic and what is not, what is vice and what is virtue, what punishments can be legitimately prescribed, the speed at which this “justice” can be delivered without abandoning the whole notion of due process, and the process of appeal to constitutional higher authorities outside Malakand. Indeed, it is unclear whether the regulation is even constitutional or not.
The “peace accord” which underlies it is even more problematic. It is between the toothless TNSM and the nervous NWFP government, not between the federal government backed by the Pakistan Army and the Tehreeke-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) led by the regional warlord Baitullah Mehsud. In other words, the two main protagonists in the war against terror are missing from the equation. A direct “peace accord” between the NWFP government and the TTP in May 2008 fell apart quickly because the Swati warlord Fazlullah used the breather to intensify his terrorist campaign, capture space and further erode the writ of the state.
The situation of the NWFP government is equally precarious. The secular nationalist ANP swept aside the religious-conservative Muttahida Majlise-e-Amal in the 2008 elections in Swat. It sought to establish its administrative writ via the May 2008 peace accord with the TTP and hastened the exit of the Pakistan Army from Swat after its successful military operations in the winter of 2007-08. Since then, it has progressively lost control of territory and power to the TTP whose mission statement is to seize all of Pakistan and establish an anti-American Islamic Emirate along the lines of the Taliban government in Kabul from 1997-2001. Faced with the prospect of calling the army back to launch full scale operations – which would have inevitably led to thousands of innocent civilian casualties because of the deployment and use of tanks and artillery as the conventional tools of war in an unconventional guerilla-war zone, and alienated the ANP’s vote bank – it chose the more opportunist route of parleying with the TTP through the aegis of the TNSM which has been demanding the enforcement of sharia in the region since 1995 when Sufi Mohammad first raised the banner of Islam under his lashkar. The ANP’s strategy is to concede a popular version of Sharia to Sufi Mohammad and either drive a wedge between him and his son-in law Fazlullah, thereby weakening Fazlullah, or to win over and neutralize Fazlullah to Sufi’s side and drive a wedge between him and his leader Baitullah Mehsud, thereby weakening the latter. In the event of the peace accord failing because of the TTP’s intransigence and aggression, the ANP will say to the people of Swat that it tried to enforce shariah and provide swift justice to them but was thwarted by the TTP – consequently, the unleashing of the full military might of the Pakistani state will be justified and nay sayers in the media and among the TNSM will be silenced.
This means that hard-nosed politics is in command of the situation in Swat and not controversial notions of Islam or swift justice which are merely the peg on which to restore the writ of the state. This conclusion is reinforced by various statements of different political and religious parties and groups. The PPP information minister, Sherry Rehman, says that President Asif Zardari will not endorse the pact until peace has actually been restored in Swat. The prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, says the use of force should not be the first or only option. The ANP chief minister of the NWFP, Amir Haider Hoti, insists the army will remain in “reactive” mode rather than be withdrawn or put in to “proactive” mode to cater for any eventuality. The religious parties, in particular the Jamaat-e-Islami and the JUI, have duly criticized the accord because they can see through its “Islamic” smokescreen.
Is this a tactical “surrender” by the PPP-ANP before the encroaching Taliban because they suspect that the Pakistan Army cannot bring itself to root out the menace? Hard-nosed realists know, first, that the Taliban are linked to Al-Qaeda and their mission statement is war for global Islam and not peace for local justice. Second, this is as much Pakistan’s war as it is America’s. Third, to win this war, the government has to win back the hearts and minds of the people and recruit them in the battle against the Taliban. Therefore a failed peace accord based on the popular demand for shariah justice in which the blame for not allowing it to take root and flourish can be duly put on the Taliban followed by a relentless military campaign is not a bad strategy. Politics is, after all, the continuation of war by other means. Expect the blame-game to begin before the ink has dried.