Peshawar in a State of Siege

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Peshawar seems to get into quite a grim situation soon. With Federal Government being clueless of how to handle this situation with the militants and Musharraf being more politically vulnerable then ever, nobody has a slightest of the ideas how to deal with current crisis. The peace accord with the militants seems not to be working. There should be an authoritarion figure who can handle this situation. Musharraf with all his political foes around is pretty docile right now and is lying dormant. New government is trying to stand on its feet and bureaucracy is as clueless as ever.

http://www.dawn.com/2008/06/25/top1.htm

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PESHAWAR, June 24: The security situation in Peshawar is grim. Officials in the home department, who evaluate the situation on an almost daily basis, believe declaring a state of red alert is now only a matter of time.With militants knocking at the gates of the capital of the NWFP, even the more circumspect government and police officials now grudgingly concede that Peshawar, too, could fall in a few months.****“Peshawar is in a state of siege and if Peshawar falls, the rest of the districts in the NWFP would fall like ninepins”, a worried senior government official told Dawn.It would be a shame if Peshawar were to fall. It is not Swat. It is home to the headquarters of the 11th Corps, the paramilitary Frontier Corps, the Frontier Constabulary and the police.Also, the optimists amongst us would like to believe that it would require an organised force to take over Peshawar.

But the might of the militant groups operating around Peshawar from one to the other end is all too visible and alarming to ignore.And if there were still any doubts left, that too have been washed away in recent days by the forays made into Peshawar **by the ‘moral brigade’ of Mangal Bagh.**The kidnapping of Christians from one of the NWFP’s biggest teaching hospitals and the sighting of militants in the very heart of the military cantonment has made even the very laid-back sit up and take notice.Police stations in rural Peshawar have long given up patrolling at night after a contingent was blown up by a rocket-propelled grenade and charred bodies of policemen were retrieved and buried without allowing their dear ones to see their faces for the last time.

So grim has the situation become that a committee that includes **Chief Minister Hoti, Governor Owais and the Corps Commander Masood Aslam met on May 31 to discuss possible options for defending Peshawar.**The prime minister’s adviser on interior, Rehman A. Malik, landed in Peshawar on June 19 to discuss the situation. The two meetings, however, yielded no results.The military, the paramilitary, the constabulary and the police are unable or unwilling to muster enough force to defend the city.In some ways, **this apparent apathy for Peshawar reflects the federal government’s lack of urgency to handle the situation in tribal regions and cope with a possible fallout of the peace agreements it is pursuing with tribal militants.**President Pervez Musharraf – whose dramatic volte face on the Taliban and alliance with the United States in 2001 largely contributed to the mess in the tribal region, has taken a back seat.

The only person constitutionally mandated tolook after Fata, the president has since the Feb 18 elections more or less lost all interest in the borderlands.Those who have worked with him closely on Fata say that except for occasional briefings, there have been no “brainstorming meetings’ on the subject with key players for months. The last such meeting took place before the general election, according to credible government officials, and they do not even remember the date!The National Security Council – another of Musharraf’s controversial brainchild – met on Nov 8 last year to discuss, among other things, the situation in Fata.The elected government, despite being in office for nearly three months now, has yet to find its feet.Bogged down in the judicial crisis and grappling with economic woes, the coalition government seems to have lost sight of an issue that is exposing Pakistan’s sovereignty to great peril.

The parliament has yet to debate Pakistan’s participation in the “war on terror”, define its rules of engagement and, more important, prepare a comprehensive counter-insurgency strategy.The initial calls for redefining the “war on terror” by the newly-elected political leadership have all evaporated into thin air. Fata, for all practical purposes, has gone to the back-burner.In the absence of a national policy, the military appears to be in the process of reorienting its strategy. **The bureaucracy, required to implement the state’s policy on the ground in Fata, remains as clueless as ever.**Little wonder then that administrators of the seven tribal regions and the regional coordination officers in their meeting with Mr Malik last week were unanimous in seeking policy directives.Such is Pakistan’s tribal dilemma that Mr Rehman Malik, who, as the prime minister’s adviser, has nothing to do with Fata, has assumed its charge.As a matter of fact, the interior ministry has no jurisdiction over Fata except for allocating funds to the Frontier Corps.

**So in the given circumstances, it is the governor, the corps commander of Peshawar and sector commanders of security agencies, who are trying to give some direction to an otherwise directionless Fata policy.**The prevailing situation resembles that of a bus-load of drivers, with no one really at the steering l and the bus lurching from one side to the other.What can be more ironical that those who are supposed to be in the driver’s seat are pretending to be passengers.The June 11 bombing of an FC post on Mohmand borders with Afghanistan should have been a wake-up call. Sadly, this does not appear to be happening.THE government came up with warnings on Tuesday of an army action to crush militancy in the vicinity of Peshawar.The belated move came after the situation in the NWFP took an ominous turn over the past few days with the fall of Jandola, a town on the road to South Waziristan, to Baitullah Mehsud’s men, the relentless advance of Taliban-led militants towards Peshawar and the Swat scenario defying all fire-fighting attempts.

No less a person than Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the chief of JUI, saw it urgent to ring alarm bells, saying in a statement on Tuesday that the government must act to stop the Taliban march before it was too late.—Dawn report

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Re: Peshawar in a State of Siege

You know if even Fazlur Rehman is warning about fall of not just Peshawar, but entire NWFP, than this is serious news. We are talking about the fall of a large city and province of Pakistan, and yet you know who and the entrenched establishment is still obsessed about what speech Altaf will next give and who will MQM next elect as nazim etc. Just boggles the mind!

There is no sense of priority among some people to actual problems, rather than imagined or created ones.

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^^^Isn't major responsibilty lies on Mush? After all getting billions of dollars for crushing Al-Quaeda and Taliban proved otherwise.

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You know,day before yesterday Fazlur Rehman was taken to the Poly Clinic in Rawalpindi with chest pains, initial news was that he had a heart attack, but then the situation is so grave that yesterday he went to the parliament to discuss the current NWFP situation with Gilani. People in NWFP are panicking and rightly so. ANP seems to be clueless. Hoti is young and lacks tactic strategies. Owais Ghani(governor) then met Musharraf yesterday again to discuss the situation.

Well you can not let the hell loose and then hope for the best.

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Re: Peshawar in a State of Siege

taliban's non-stop march ? red alerts ? and what about the innocent people living there in those areas , whom should they look upto ?? any hope , please share

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Re: Peshawar in a State of Siege

This is very worrying situation. The govt must do all it can to dislodge terrorists form the frontier regions & if necessary ask American and NATO forces for help. There should be no more peace deals with militants & full military force must be use to clean up this mess...or we're doomed.

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Re: Peshawar in a State of Siege

I see the peace process with the 'peaceful and noble' tribals is going quite well. I look forward to the day when they will claim the entire "Pakhtukhawah" in the name of Mehsud -- maybe then the rest of the Pakistan will wake up to what's knocking on their doors.

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Yeah, he managed to at the very least stall the Taliban offensive all these years after 2001, but now as he has less power, the new government is letting Taliban take over the entire NWFP soon.

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Yea, and you're conveniently overlooking the role he and the origination he represents played in creating jihadi monster that is knocking on our doors now. And even now, its not the govt, but the army who is making peace deals with Talibans.

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No, it's clearly the ANP-PPP govnt that is pushing for peace deals after they already failed previously, so you're wrong on that count. The army is following the govnt's orders. I don't think he had any major role in creating these monsters, the army did, that's of course true. But in any case, some people learn from their mistakes, while others keep repeating them.

Peshawar and whole of NWFP may have to fall before certain elements realize the gravity of the situation.

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Re: Peshawar in a State of Siege

This is what Musharraf has been doing with the aid money:

WASHINGTON:** Nearly six billion US dollars provided by the US to Pakistan to fight against terrorism since the September 9, 2001 attacks on America has little been used for that purpose, an independent audit has found. **

**The findings by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released in a report on Tuesday showed a troubling lack of oversight and accountability for the US funds to Pakistan that were meant to combat terrorism. **

According to findings, there were lack of oversight of two billion of dollars that have been doled out in Pakistan in an effort to fight terrorism.

The US has provided Pakistan about USD 5.6 billion in payments since 2001 attacks on World Trade Centre, which killed more than 3000 people.

The GAO found several cases where the Bush Administration could not explain or account for such payments, including millions of dollars for road construction with no evidence that any roads were built, and reimbursement costs to the Pakistan military that may be duplicative.

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Is it the same Fazlu who was part of the MMA govt 2002-2007? Is it the same Fazlu who sides with extremists? What is he crying about now? Why is that the likes of him support terrorists under the table and cry wolf in public?

BRIDAL PICS.
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Seems like Fazlu is turning a hero in someone's view. Dude he is hypocrite of a kind. The situation might be dangerous (I am not questioning that) but to cite likes of Fazlu to show the picture is not credible enough.

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No it is not making of him a hero, it is sounding the gravity of the issue.Why would you say that the picture is not credible enough? Yesterday he did a meeting with Gilani and today there was a high class meeting involving Gilani, the Governor/Ministers of NWFP, Ashfaq Kiyani/GHQ, Speaker NA and Senate etc. Gilani has given charge of FATA to the NWFP leadership and the army now. When people like Fazlur Rehman shout and cry then there must be something serious.

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Where was Fazlu when MMA was incharge of NWFP? What did they achieve in their tenure against Taliban, Alqaida? As I said he is hypocrite of a kind, situation could very well be grave I'd still take anyone else's words than pay attention to him.

Unfortunately Pakistan is not in a position to do anything against Taliban anymore, they have confidantes and supporters in army, ISI, politics etc, they are largely spread out. No "operation" can clean them up now. We can only seal borders with Afghanistan or giveup FATA altoghether and seal borders from FATA to Pakistan.

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Well i don't think it should be the time that we should compare what MMA did in it's government in the last 5 years. I don't know how much clout they have against these militants. I think utmost is to save the province.

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It's being said that Bagh seb (or some other Pak army groomed jehadi) and his 10,000 ill-trained mercenaries are about to take over Peshawar.

11th corps of the Glorious Army has its head quarter in Peshawar, 100.000 soldiers are stationed on the Pak-Afghan border, Punjab Regiment is based in Mardan that is hardly 50 km away from Peshawar and 100 km from Rawalpindi, the home of fake commandos-and now they are saying that Peshawar is threatened by the militants. There is something fishy going on there.

Mangal Bagh, a former bus driver, has almost 10,000 militants under his command. From where does he get money to afford this luxury?

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Opium; and frankly numbers of soldiers don't matter in an insurgency (see Iraq and Afghanistan for further examples). Nothing fishy in my eyes, except for the complacency of the public, and support of jihadists in Pakistan, especially in the north west parts of the country.

Just remember that a tet offensive type scenario can happen against even superpowers, let alone a country like Pakistan.

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****The roots of terrorism

****AS the incumbent government gears up to meet myriad challenges, Mangal Bagh is becoming the new recurring nightmare in the NWFP.

Mangal Bagh’s sudden rise, his swift success in setting up a parallel administration and the freedom with which his anti-vice squads challenge the writ of the state has convinced many of the political administration’s complicity in this new phenomenon.

The question is, what precisely is the strategy of the US and the Pakistani establishment in the tribal belt? Is the rise and rise of Mangal Bagh another ploy to destabilise the government? Or does it have more to do with securing supply lines for US forces in Afghanistan through the tribal belt courtesy a chosen proxy whose firing squads dispense ruthless ‘justice’? This is a repeat of what the Taliban did in Afghanistan in various war zones: total appeasement of the establishment, until things spun out of control and resulted in insufferable destruction. So is there more turmoil in store for the NWFP as the Lashkar flexes its muscles unchecked and gains ground in both tribal and settled areas?

The US policy for quick fixes and immediate gain results in disruption that leads to yet another cycle of destabilisation. Gen Naseerullah Babar was entrusted the US-supported Unocol oil pipeline project by the Benazir Bhutto administration that nurtured the Taliban. The US seldom learns lessons, so it repeats follies —

Hardly a wonder then that whispering voices blame the US for the current turmoil in the tribal belt and on the outskirts of Peshawar where an extremist wields enormous power with a fleet of the latest SUVs (allegedly 500 in number) and sophisticated weaponry. Using a local bandit to terrorise proud, tradition-bound tribals is scarcely the best option for achieving political gains, and too of a short-term nature.

“The residents of Fata have become the objects of history instead of being the subjects of history,” observes Afrasiab Khattak, provincial president of the ANP. He believes that reform planned in 2001 and later abandoned in the wake of the so-called war on terror needs to be introduced. “The people resisting reform are not the tribals but those in the vested lobby in Peshawar and Islamabad that wants to maintain the status quo so it can squeeze the redundant system,” he adds.

The only way forward lies in the social, political and economic empowerment of people currently living in complete isolation from the ‘development agenda’ dispensed by Islamabad. “During BB’s previous government, Afzal Khan was minister for SAFRON [states and frontier regions division]. The moment he advocated political reform in Fata he was posted out within 48 hours, as minister for Kashmir affairs,” a bemused Afrasiab Khattak recalls.

There can be no socio-economic development in the tribal belt without social, political and judicial reform of the black colonial regulations that are ruthlessly exploited by the establishment to enslave the populace even in this day and age. “No economic development is possible until ‘ownership rights’ are restored,” argues Khattak.

“While the military has penetrated the traditional no-go areas, the political actors and systems have been dispensed with. Instead of giving breathing space to civil society, the opposite has been done, thereby creating a black hole where the gun rules. The resulting spill-over into all of Pakistan is only logical. Instead of firefighting we need long-term solutions,” asserts Khattak.

Adding to the existing socio-economic woes, the minister for finance has “warned of serious economic instability if the [new] government provides immediate relief to the public”. Meanwhile, the US has approved a package of F-16 fighter jets for Pakistan. Given the priorities of local and global actors and a preference for keeping the pot boiling, there is little light at the end of the tunnel for the traumatised people of the tribal areas. Indeed, all 160 million toiling Pakistanis remain at the mercy of brutal realpolitik.

http://www.dawn.com/2008/03/24/op.htm#4