Jan Assakzai
Balochistan is already brewing with Baloch insurgency and sectarian violence, which has claimed hundreds of lives so far. Talibanisation of Balochistan will simply stretch the army to its limit.
Talibanisation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA seems to have penetrated further south in its neighbouring region of Balochistan. Its manifestation came from the recently written letters by Taliban to several girls’ schools in the provincial capital, Quetta. The letters warned teachers and administrators of dire consequences if they failed to observe purdah in schools and did not remove Western-style clothes. Taliban militancy is likely to thrive in Balochistan because of its geography, demography, and the crisis of governance. Balochistan’s northern areas, including capital Quetta, is predominately inhabited by Pakhtuns.
The capital Quetta and adjacent districts are known for a conservative mixture of religion and tribalism in their local culture. It is quite similar to the culture in Pakistan’s other Pakhtun areas. The Pakhtun belt in the northern Balochistan province is strategically important, because it is directly located opposite to the Taliban stronghold areas in Afghanistan. Pakhtuns straddle the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The insurgency in the south of Afghanistan has a direct bearing on the province. The Afghan Taliban have close links with Pakhtun society. Pakistan’s right-wing religious political parties have a strong presence in Balcohistan’s Pakhtun areas. It is believed that some of their supporters openly help the Afghan Taliban in hiding, fund-raising and recruitment to fight the NATO and US forces in Afghanistan. Sometimes injured Taliban are treated in some of Quetta’s private houses and hospitals.
Taliban chief Mullah Muhammad Omar is believed to be hiding in the same area. Worse still, some al Qaeda operatives, under pressure from military operations and drone attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA, may have crossed into Balochistan and found refuge with a network of thousands of religious seminaries set up and funded by Saudi oil money during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Balochistan is also transiting mostly non-lethal supplies (such as food, fuel and building materials) to the US forces in Afghanistan. The shorter, southern route passes through Sindh to the Balochistan-Chaman border crossing into southern Afghanistan. The longer and more commonly used northern route passes through Sindh, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and the Torkham border, crossing into central and northern Afghanistan. The US is also known to have flown drone aircraft from a desert strip in Balochistan besides undertaking special operation missions against the Taliban, al Qaeda and drug barons on the border areas (December 21, 2009, The Guardian).
There have been no known Pakistani Taliban outfits operating from Balochistan so far. But it is likely that some of them have been spurred and encouraged by the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and their successes in the tribal belt and their ability to strike at the army in Punjab. This might explain why the Taliban in Balochistan decided to move to the next level: challenging the writ of Islamabad and trying to establish their formal presence. Their threats and method of intimidation are like those of the militants in Swat and other parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA.
Balochistan is already brewing with Baloch insurgency and sectarian violence, which has claimed hundreds of lives so far. Its governance is in throes, creating more opportunities for Taliban-style solutions to the people’s problems. Talibanisation of Balochistan will simply stretch the army to its limit. Any potential military action against the Taliban in Balochistan will not be easy, as the conservative local culture is a favourable environment for the Taliban’s ideology in the long run. If the Taliban create law and order situations, they can, in turn, easily hide among the people. This means the Pakistani army cannot hunt the Taliban quickly. Any potential military operation will thus be tantamount to winning a battle but not the war.
Why Talibanisation is more dangerous in Balochistan is because it is not FATA where, until March 2004, the Pakistan military had never entered. Balochistan, like Swat, is Pakistan’s settled area. Besides, Balochistan has a long border with Punjab and Sindh, with Karachi housing a large Pakhtun population. Any chaos in the Pakhtun buffer territories will spill over to the core of Pakistan — Punjab and Sindh. Thus the army cannot keep the heartland along the Indus Valley secure from the chaos in the Pakhtun areas. It needs to quash Taliban militants in Balochistan before they become well entrenched.
The writer is a London-based analyst hailing from Balochistan. He can be reached at janassakzai200@gmail.com
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010 519story_19-5-2010_pg3_6 |
