Kamila Hyat wrote a convincing essay last week on how the deteriorating conditions inside Swat have demonstrated the utter defeat of the Pakistani state:
For all the brave words we heard after the operation against militants resumed in Swat after the middle of 2008, the armed forces deployed there seem to have failed completely to overcome the fighters. People in the valley, few of whom risk speaking out given that now even Mingora is not safe, believe they have been punished for voting for the liberal ANP in the February 2008 polls, and voting against the MMA coalition. The vote appeared to be a desperate bid to escape the tyranny of militants who had begun to exert their hold over the area in the mid-1990s, when the firebrand leader of the radical Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariah Mohammadi (TNSM), Sufi Mohammad Khan, began an effort to impose his own version of Islamic law, launched the FM stations that authorities have since been unable to shut down and took thousands off for ‘jihad’ against the Americans in Afghanistan in 2001. It is today a rather frightening reflection on reality that the now aged Sufi Mohammad, released from jail last year as the ANP attempted to reach a deal with militants, today comes across as a moderate.
It is not only happening in Swat. Areas like Quetta now seem to be far more dangerous than they were before:
Pakistani security forces launched a massive hunt for a top American United Nations official abducted by suspected Islamic militants Monday in Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan.
Gunmen kidnapped John Solecki, head of the local office of the U.N. High Commission on Refugees, while he was traveling to his office in an upscale neighborhood of the provincial capital of Quetta. They killed his Pakistani driver.
Quetta has always had something of a wild reputation in the West, but my impression is that it was never as insane as people made it out to be. After all, this is a city where Janine DiGiovanni claimed she saw, along with Karachi, dozens of clearly British soldiers traveling around openly out of uniform. Yet, after the murder of Steve Vance, the U.S. official who was in charge of heading up development initiatives in the NWFP, in Peshawar last year, could this also be a sign of escalating violence specifically against American officials in Pakistan?
Quetta—and most of Balochistan, for that matter—has mostly focused its violence on Afghanistan and Pakistan, rather than foreigners. It was never a particularly safe city, but reasonable safeguards could allow foreigners to live there. As it has turned into the headquarters for Mullah Omar’s shura—a former intelligence official told me in October that “we” (meaning the U.S.) have his street address there—the situation there has worsened. Quetta’s insurgency has mostly been in Afghanistan, however, and Balochistan’s insurgency has mainly been separatist against Islamabad. I’m not sure what they’re thinking, going after the local head of UNHCR… unless American citizenship has suddenly come to trump all other concerns.
But Pakistan’s growing inability to provide basic law and order in its western regions—all of them—is a serious problem.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
{ 3 comments }
I can’t see how connecting
a single kidnapping in Quetta
with the problems in FATA
adds up.
Pretend for a moment that the Pakistanis were trying their darnedest
to subdue the locals
wouldn’t that make it easier
to engage in malfeasance
elsewhere?
The standard paragraph form emerged when paper was scarce.
Thanks for drawing attention to the desperate situation to Swat.
A few miscellaneous points:
– Steve Vance was not a U.S. Government official. He was working for CHF International, a Silver Spring, MD-based NGO which was implementing USAID projects.
– His murder came shortly after an attempt to murder the Principal Officer of the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar when she was leaving her residence, the kidnapping in Peshawar of the Afghan Consul General and the Iranian Commercial Attaché, both of whom are still being held
– The official who was kidnapped in Quetta was working for UNHCR (not UNICEF) which has long operated in Quetta.
– Quetta has been dangerous for foreigners for years. NY Times journalist Carlotta Gall was roughed up there December 2006 apparently by Pakistani government operatives. Most of the foreigners who are working there remain on secure, well-guarded facilities.
– It wouldn’t be surprising to see the Pakistani authorities try to blame the Solecki kidnapping on the Baluchi insurgents in order to deflect attention away from the Jihadis who operate with impunity there.
– The Pakistan Army needs to learn a thing or two about contemporary counter-insurgency operations. In both Swat and Bajour they are using artillery against locations and communities where opponents are thought to be and have caused extensive collateral damage and massive dislocations.
– I commend the columns of Farhat Taj, a social scientist from Pakistan who is based in Norway. She has been writing thoughtful pieces that are appearing frequently in Pakistan’s English-language, “The News International.” Her comments are clear-headed and logical with respect to the situation in Swat and elsewhere in the Pashtun areas of Pakistan.
Argh, UNHCR. That was a lazy mistake. Serves me right for 1am blogging. As for Vance, he was usually described as an official, since he was administering the aid programs to the FATA. But I understand the need to distinguish.