Post-Bajaur situation alarming
Imtiaz Gul
Friday Times
Issue: November 24-30, 2006
The government would need some innovative thinking to get itself out of the bind in which it has placed itself vis-à-vis the angry tribal Pashtun
Over three weeks after the bombing of Zia-ul-uloom Taleem-ul Quran in the Chenagai village of Bajaur agency, all government claims seem to have fallen flat in the face of angry tribesmen’s conviction that the attack was mounted by US forces stationed in Afghanistan. They also continue to insist that all the victims were seminarians and not under-training militants as claimed by the government.
Attempts by Jama’at-e Islami as well as Awami National Party leaders to visit the bombed site have failed, but some members of the Peshawar High Court Bar Association did manage to visit the area and speak with the people. They have since compiled a report that has also been sent to the NWFP governor.
Unofficially, however, some Jama’at members did slip through the cordon around Chenagai on Nov 16 with a group of journalists who had a chance to see for themselves the flattened madrassa, now being rebuilt by the local tribesmen. Journalists saw tattered clothes, caps, small slippers, bowls, plates and large-size kettles and bowls which the young students of the bombed seminary used for collecting food and tea from the nearby villages.
The journalists also met with Mir Zaman, elder brother of Maulana Liaquat, the administrator of madrassa, who was killed in the attack, and Abdul Hameed, Maulana Liaquat’s nephew, who would replace the deceased as the new administrator of the madrassa. Maulana Liaquat wanted to turn the madrassa into a great seat of learning, Mir Zaman was quoted as saying.
“Write [in your newspapers] that we will settle scores soon,” a young student told the journalists. The media-men also visited the graveyard where the victims, including Maulana Liaquat, lie buried. They saw a large number of people busy offering condolence prayers.
Most of the journalists came back with the impression that the area is still seething with anger. Not many people in Bajaur, however, would agree that the Dargai Fort suicide attack on Nov 8 was the result of this anger: as many as 42 Punjab regiment recruits lost their lives in that deadly attack.
National security agencies – both civil as well as military – meanwhile continue to look for the culprits of that attack. So far, the agencies have picked up about 60 people, mostly Afghan refugees in the Bajaur and Malakand region. About a dozen of those being interrogated are Pakistanis, predominantly Pashtun from the Dir and Malakand region.
Aftab Sherpao, the home minister, told TFT last week of “critical and important progress in the investigations of the Dargai incident”, but so far nothing substantial has come to the fore yet, unless the government is sitting on top of some information that it is loath to release just yet. On his part, President Pervez Musharraf visited the Punjab Regimental Centre in Dargai, perhaps to signal to his detractors that acts of terror would not deter him from pursuing the extremists. We will not back off in the face of such attacks, Musharraf declared, reiterating that the war on terror would continue and the perpetrators of these acts would not be spared.
Officials in the ministry of interior as well as within the intelligence establishment are primarily looking for leads to the masterminds from three angles: was it the handiwork of Afghan agents (as a reprisal for what they believe Pakistan’s support for the Taliban militants inside Afghanistan); did the Pakistani Taliban or staunch followers of the defunct Tehrike Nifaze Shariate Mohammedi (TNSM) mastermind the attack on the under-training Punjab Regiment recruits; or did the agencies create the suicide attack scenario to deflect attention from the strong resentment and wave of protests following the still mysterious and controversial missile strike on the seminary in the Chenagai village near Khaar, the administrative headquarter of Bajaur agency?
Sceptics in Peshawar raised this issue because they think the Bajaur tragedy really inflamed emotions. However, TFT’s conversations with people from various walks of life show the third possibility to be nothing but a stretch. “The government would not get army recruits killed and in such a large number to dilute the reaction from the Bajaur strike,” says a former intelligence official.
A top official dismissed the possibility outright: “The soldiers have to fight these terrorists. Do you think the government would get something like this done which could have a disastrous impact on the morale of those very people it needs to employ to fight this war? This is just ludicrous.”
Analysts also point to the fact that the attack was mounted by a suicide bomber. “This is Al Qaeda modus operandi and it has also been picked up by groups affiliated with Al Qaeda,” says one, adding: “The Dargai tragedy has to be seen in the context of the attack on the Bajaur seminary.” Other observers also dismiss the possibility of the hand of Afghan government. “This was a highly motivated attack and could only be mounted by an extremist. External elements would have used a remote-controlled device for this purpose. The only possibility, and this is a long shot, could be for the Afghan elements to have found an extremist who was then asked to carry out the attack in retaliation of the Bajaur attack. But this is really outlandish,” says a former intelligence official.
Most observers, however, agree that emotions are still running high over the attack and the consequent loss of life. “I have never seen such an outcry, people at large were fuming and cursing the government,” a professor of the Peshawar University told TFT. He said that many of his students who belong to Dir, Dargai and Malakand came back with disturbing stories about the bombing of the TNSM madrassa. In fact, one reason the authorities have still kept the area blocked off is to ensure that no MMA elements can go there and link up with the local tribesmen.
Interestingly, as one student told TFT, a day after the attack, TNSM leaders openly boasted that 278 people had enlisted to join the Taliban, though they ruled out direct attacks on Pakistan army or its installations.
The government is now trying to return to the peace deal it was preparing to sign with the tribes before the strike. Some sources say local leaders are prepared to give it another shot and this because most think that the Americans mounted the attack to sabotage the deal. The deal, TFT has leant, is along the same lines as the North Waziristan agreement: no one will attack army and paramilitary troops and the local tribes would hand over any foreigner found in the area.
The entire region is a stronghold of the TNSM, whose leader Sufi Mohammad is still locked in the Dera Ismail Khan jail for having crossed over into Afghanistan along with 8000 fighters to fight the Americans. He was sneaking back into Pakistan after the ouster of the Taliban when he was captured by the border guards
Many fighters loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the chief of the fundamentalist Hezbe Islami are also known to have sanctuaries in Bajaur because of their ideological and ethnic affinity to the local tribes. “That is why we cannot rule out the role of these outfits either as far as the Dargai attack is concerned,” a very senior intelligence official in Peshawar told TFT. However, he stressed that investigations are being carried out from multiple angles. “We are not looking into just one or two possibilities.”
What is intriguing for the investigators is the fact that instead of attacking one of the many paramilitary camps located within the tribal region, like the one in Khaar, the attackers chose a regular army training camp. Officials in Peshawar say they are preparing for more such incidents since the TNSM leaders and followers, particularly those masked tribesmen who attended the funerals and the protest demonstration, are not likely to sit back.
Usually they look for opportunities to execute the threats they have been hurling at the government. Khalid Aziz, ex chief secretary of the province, also sounded apprehensive. “Given the tribal mindset, I foresee more trouble coming because they usually do not spare their ‘enemies’, in this case the Pakistan army and paramilitary troops are their avowed enemies,” Aziz told TFT.
That is why Pashtun nationalists – led by ANP – have also embarked upon a new campaign premised on the perceived and actual dangers to their community on both sides of the Durand Line. The rhetoric-loaded ANP Jirga in Peshawar on Nov 20, and the Tahafuz Qabail Conference also in Peshawar a day before provide ample evidence of these under-currents which these parties might now find easier to exploit in a situation laced with resentment and anti-Americanism.
Both meetings left no doubt about the current mood in the Frontier Province; the army must return to the barracks, stop its interference and involvement in the tribal areas and allow North-Waziristan like agreements in other agencies to cool off the explosive situation there. The meetings also called for a grand, cross-border jirga of all the Pashtun tribes, something that Afghan government also sees as a panacea for the turmoil.
“This situation demands statesmanship as well as innovative strategy and not the status quo that the British and successive Pakistani regimes perpetuated for their narrow-ended interests,” says an analyst.
The writer is a freelance columnist. Email: vogul1960@yahoo.com