No compromise can ever work with the Taliban. It is sad to see that we are giving back Imam Deri back to Taliban and our military is evacuting.
All the loss of our precious soldiers is now going to waste.
2 years from now, we’ll lose even more soldiers to clean up the mess in Imam Deri, and the cycle of violence will go on.
Islamists however would disagree with this, because they just got 2 more years to regroup and bring more havoc to the rest of Pakistan.
Editorial: Atrophy of Muslim utopia
If the idea was to buy peace with sharia in Swat, it is not working so far. The TNSM chief, Maulana Sufi Mohammad, mediating between the ANP government in Peshawar and his son-in-law Mulla Fazlullah in Swat, has clearly decided to side with his son-in-law. He has demanded appointment of qazis and the release of Taliban prisoners by March 15, after which one can imagine all sorts of dire developments. On the basis of which strength is the great Sufi issuing his warning, if not the Taliban led by his son-in-law?
Meanwhile, the Taliban have not stopped attacking convoys and kidnapping soldiers to use as bargain counters. The DCO Swat was picked up by the Taliban before the ink was dry on the ANP-TSNM deal. The message of the kidnapping was: let our jailed men go. The men were released and the DCO was released. Now the Sufi wants the rest of them released too because that is a part of the deal. And who decides on the identity of the persons to be released? The son-in-law. Even if the men have been caught as common criminals in Peshawar?
As the Sufi delivered his latest warning, two Frontier Corps soldiers were injured in an attack on their convoy and an FC commandant was kidnapped. Is the Sufi put off by this? No. He is put off by the tardiness of the Peshawar government in implementing sharia. He wants qazis in place quickly and he doesn’t want magistrates posing as qazis. He has made it clear that he will personally screen all the qazis sent to Swat and will approve only those who accept the kind of sharia he wants. The law under the Constitution of Pakistan still in force has already been dubbed “un-Islamic” by him.
The Sufi says if the peace deal is broken by either of the two parties — Peshawar or the Taliban — they would be held accountable. The fact is that he can’t hold the Taliban accountable for anything. The Taliban are in power; he is merely a go-between. He can punish Peshawar through the Taliban; he can’t punish the Taliban, full stop. Warlord Fazlullah says he will let the Pakistan army and constabulary personnel through if an advanced notice is given to him. He controls the movement of the army and has been able to put an end to the checkposts it had in Swat.
This is not a good state of affairs. We have no desire to criticise the ANP government. It has gone for the deal after clearly stating that the army was making no headway in Swat even after a critical visit of the army chief to the affected region. The ANP leaders have made no bones about what they think of the possible “intent” of the army as it faces up to the Taliban terrorists. Therefore, if it has gone for a peace deal with the Taliban from a position of prostration to save its cadres from being caught and beheaded in Peshawar, one can hardly blame the ANP.
A much bigger damage is being done, however. The people of Pakistan were hoping that sharia would bring about the Islamic utopia in Swat which strangely fulfils the requirements of a set-piece city state where conditions of the ideal state could be created. Discussions on TV are now converging to a consensus that what the Sufi and his Taliban executive will bring about will actually be a dystopia of unlimited cruelty. The “shining city on the hill” will not be the ideal Islamic state but a nightmare comparable to the courts of Somalia that dished out contradictory judgements and finally set up their own armies to force arbitrary punishments down the throats of luckless Somalians. *