A good read on the tribal areas and the fighting going on:
The Nation
By M.A. NIazi
The indications might be difficult to read for some, because there are very few officials with a direct memory of the past, but it seems that the tribes are rising in the Tribal Areas. The events of the last few days indicate that the North-West Frontier might revert to what is was under the British: a harsh area which will accept only control, and which will not consider itself a part of Pakistan.
The Quaid-e-Azam’s decision, in 1947, to vacate the cantonment at Razmak was opposed tooth and nail by the bureacracy and the Army. It was argued that the tribals, fuelled by an Afghanistan which was hostile to Pakistan (as evidenced by its unusccessful blackball of Pakistan’s application for UN membership), would rise up and raid into the settled areas once again, as they had done in the past. But the Quaid had confidence in his people, and knew that the proud tribesmen, who had demonstrated violently against Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru during his visit to the Kurram, Mohmand and Waziristan Agencies in 1946, when appealed to in the name of Islam, would rise in a different way, and take to the path of development. The Faqir of Ipi in South Waziristan would not accept Pakistan, and continued his rebellion, but despite the withdrawal of a permanent armed presence there, he could not raise the tribes, and the last military operations, which involved air power, took place in December 1952. However, these were isolated incidents.
“At present”, according to Ian Stephens, an American writer who visited the area and fell in love with its rugged wild beauty as so many Englishmen before him, “the irritant of the infidel British regime having withdrawn itself, the Frontier is remarkably peaceful. During journeys, since the withdrawal, along the Pakistan side of it, in 1948, 1951 and again this year (1961), I have been amazed by the change. Within my extensive zone of travel there were no hostilities, actual or apprehended between the Frontier Corps or the Army or tribal lashkars, as in former days. Nor did I see the least sign of Pukhtoonistan activities”.
That was the situation, but the great historian Arnold Toynbee, who was also interested in this area for a myriad historiographical reasons, gave the following analysis: “Pakistan does pursue a forward policy on the frontier and a vigorous one, but its key instruments are not weapons of war, they are dispensaries, schools, sports, and, above all, economic development. This last instrument is supremely important, because it gives the tribesmen opportunities for finding alternate means of livelihood to the raiding which has been their traditional recourse.”
And what is the memory? According to an article, ‘The struggles of the Pushtoons,’ in the Khyber Gateway website (www.khyber.org), The Pukhtoons resisted violently all attempts by the British to subjugate or turn them into docile and obedient members of an enslaved community. They offered stubborn resistance to the British forces and Inspite of their meager means and resources, the Pukhtoons carried on an un-ending war against them for the preservation of their liberty. The British, proud of their glory and might, sent about one hundred expeditions one after the other against the Pukhtoons to subdue them by force but they did not yield to the enemy’s military might. According to Col. H.C. Wylly 62 military expeditions were despatched against the tribesmen between 1849-1908, besides every day small skirmishes. These included the famous Ambela campaign 1863, the Black Mountain expedition 1868, the Miranzai expedition 1891, the Hassanzai expedition 1894, the Dir and Chitral expedition 1895, the Tirah campaign 1897, and the Mahsud-Waziri expeditions 1897. As a result of this aggressive policy the whole frontier, from Malakand to Waziristan, flared up in revolt against the British in 1897.
The frontier rising of 1897 engaged about 98000 trained and well equipped British Indian forces in a grim struggle. According to Col. H.D. Hutchison, the approximate strength of the Tirah expeditionary force alone was “1010 British Officers, 10,882 British troops, 491 native officers, 22,123 native troops, 197 hospital Assistants, 179 clerks, 19,558 followers, 8000 horses, 18,384 mules and ponies and 1440 hospital riding ponies”. The British forces suffered 1150 casualties during the Tirah expedition. Similar was the fate of other expeditions as well. The operations against Mohmand in 1915-16, and Wazirs and Mahsuds between 1917-1920 and 1936 Waziri campaign also deserves special mention. In 1917 an arduous campaign was undertaken against the Mahsuds and an aeroplane was made use of for the first time in Waziristan. In 1936 Waziristan resounded with the echoes of Jehad. The main cause of the war was the marriage of Islam Bibi (a Hindu Girl of Bannu who was named Islam Bibi after conversion to Islam) with a Muslim. She was later on returned to her parents in accordance with the decision of the British law court. The Government sent over 30,000 well equipped army to curb the activities of the tribal lashkars in Waziristan but it met with no or little success. “By December 1937”, says Arthur Swinson, “when the 40,000 British and Indian troops pulled back on Peshawar, the situation was no better than it had been in January, and in 1938 more fighting was to ensue.”
The latest incident, of the killing of a Pakistan Army Major in North Waziristan, even as the battle continued in South Waziristan, is echoed in the passage mentioning the killing of ‘English officers.’ It should also be noted that the British ultimately tamed the tribals from almost annual uprisings to relatively sporadic ones by the use of air power, from 1917 onwards, but it never entirely dulled the spark, and limited to the very area now under attack, North and South Waziristan, the Wazir and Mahsud territories. And on the same day that the poor Major was sniped, like his British predecessors trying to settle the Frontier, the Pakistan armed forces made their first use of air power since December 1952, with helicopter gunships.
The air war gave a different flavour to the Wazir and Mahsud experience of the Independence struggle. While the Muslims of the rest of India remembered processions and lathi charges, demonstrations and elections, rallies and slogans, and the occasional police firing, and ultimately the riots of 1947, the Mahsuds remembered the bombings. One remembers a conversation with Lt Gen (retd) Alam Jan Mahsud, Old Aitchisonian, pucca Armoured Corps, a small man with an elvish grin, but with an unreconstructed Mahsud warrior peering out of his sharp eyes, in a reflective mood just before his retirement in 1990, talking about his childhood, about hiding with his family in a cave, while his father and uncles went off fighting in the hills.
General Mahsud. The phrase itself reflects how far the tribals embraced Pakistan, and how hard Pakistan hugged back. A child bombed by the British would become a General in that very Army which the British had raised, trained and given its traditions and corporate entity. And in his old age, that Army would be bombarding the tribes again. One does not know General Mahsud’s take on this situation, but at least some of the tribesmen felt the change. After Tuesday’s operation, in which 16 FC personnel at least, were killed, the locals started moving out of the area, for fear of bombing. And the bombing came.
The danger was always there that the Army operation in the FATA in support of the US forces’ driving back the Taliban would become transformed into a war between the tribes and the Pakistan Army. That crossing point might now have been passed. The latest Wana operation may have some Taliban or Al-Qaeda fighters, but the battle was between the locals and the Frontier Constabulary. It is worth noting that the FC have claimed to have killed 24 attackers, but have recovered only two bodies. That implies that either they only killed two attackers, and the 22 is a feat of imagination, much like Afghan warlords are performing now, and US commanders did in Vietnam; or the survivors took away the corpses. That must have been a force of at least 100, probably more like 150 upwards. This was then a sizeable tribal force.
The locals’ persistent claim that more than 60 FC men were killed is also disturbing. If true, it means the government is hiding casualties, something which it has not done for a long time. If untrue, whose side are the locals on? They are talking with such glee about paramilitaries officered and controlled by the Army.
Unlike under the British, the tribals have spread throughout Pakistan, and have integrated into its economic and social fabric. One of them, Shahid Afridi, did the country proud at Rawalpindi on the very day of the Wana operation. Some are in the armed forces. What will their reaction be? How have we landed ourselves in a position where we have to divide the loyalties of some of our citizens? And it is not as if other citizens can remain unaffected. It is not like East Pakistan or even Balochistan, where at least our fellow citizens were fighting for (or allegedly fighting for) secession. Those who are opposing the Army now are loyal Pakistanis, who just want to preserve their honour, who want to follow their code of hospitality.
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