Below, Ahsan Mirza, a student based in Toronto, Canada discusses Pakistan’s conflict in the FATA. Due to the fact that his best friend is helping IDPs in Swat Valley, the piece is a personal reflection on the current situation:
As I sit here comfortably in my Toronto apartment browsing my usual rotation of blogs, my best friend, comrade, and hero is working for Médecins Sans Frontières [Doctors Without Borders] in Swat Valley, helping conflict-affected Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). I am originally Pakistani, he is Quebecois (French-Canadian). Our friendship has been built on years of helping each other, bonding, and uniquely long conversations that I always found to be unusually profound and reflective. He has been one of the greatest sources of inspiration in my life (as he has for many others among our acquaintances).
Our friendship–my relationship with him–has given me a strange sense of urgency about the instability in Pakistan. I have many childhood friends in Pakistan, many relatives, and even family members. But for some reason, this cross-ethnic, cross-cultural, cross-religious bond speaks so differently to what this conflict means, about what is at stake.
Sitting so far away and viewing the conflict through the lens of the media, it is difficult to grasp the human element of this conflict. Human lives go beyond statistical death tolls. Families are destroyed. Friendships that have taken years to form and evolve can be ended in an instant. Dreams and aspirations are being crushed. The hope for the future, the infinite promise of life beyond the present, the desire to see a loved one – simple and universally fundamental human aspirations are at stake.
Just a couple of weeks ago, two of my friend’s MSF colleagues were killed in fighting in Swat. At the same time, the 72-hour deadline on John Solecki‘s life (what a tragic pun!) draws to an end. (The deadline was extended on Monday for an unspecified amount of time). This followed the beheading of Piotr Stanczak, a Polish engineer working in Balochistan. Countless others have been collateral victims of US air strikes, Pakistani army actions, and militant attacks. There are open and growing black markets of US Military Equipment proliferating in Peshawar. Last Tuesday, the Financial Times dedicated a full page and a half to Pakistan’s Febrile Frontier (a rarity only a few years ago).
With each passing day, I try to fight off the feeling of being more and more desensitized to the news stories coming out of Pakistan. When faced with the inevitability of helplessness and the feeling that there is no solution, the human psyche adopts the path of ignorance.
Yesterday, the pro-Taliban militants in Swat declared a 10-day ceasefire as a goodwill gesture towards peace negotiations being carried out by the NWFP government. For some reason, there is no optimism that this ceasefire will be a means for peace and prosperity that has so far eluded the people of Pakistan.
The ceasefire is a highly desperate and hopeless act by the Pakistan government to restore peace to the valley. The agreement also signifies a resignation to the fact that the pro-Taliban elements and ideology have moved beyond the Tribal Areas and acquired a stranglehold over one of Pakistan’s four provinces (if not two). Indeed, it was exactly one year ago, in February 2008, that the Pakistan Army entered a ceasefire agreement with the Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The peace deal seemed doomed to fail right from the start, but who would have thought that the Swat Valley, not FATA, would be the subject of the next peace deal.
What impact will Sharia law have on the inhabitants of Swat Valley? Pakistani officials have said that “the new system would have nothing in common with the draconian rule of the Taliban,” and that “the people demanded this and they deserve it.” Somehow I find this hard to believe. In January, BBC News ran a regular “Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl” in which a grade 7 schoolgirl from Swat wrote her reflections as the Taliban announced and then executed a moratorium on girl’s education in the Valley. Reading the diary would bring tears to any readers’ eyes. What will be the fate of these schools under the new law? To me, the closing of these girls schools is only symptomatic of what will happen under such an extremist regime.
In a press conference announcing the truce, Amir Haider Khan Hoti, the chief minister for the North West Frontier Province, spoke of a legal vacuum that existed and is now going to be filled by the new Sharia law. To me it seems that the bigger vacuum is a psychological and spiritual vacuum in the social psyche that yearns for answers and guidance.
We (Pakistanis, Muslims) often point the finger at “the West,” claiming that they are not addressing the root of the problem, be it in Israel, Iraq, or Afghanistan. However, the irony is, it seems, that we haven’t ourselves understood the root of the problem. And the chickens have come home to roost.
CHUP! - Changing Up Pakistan 
nicely said.i too find it hard to believe that the shariah there will not resemble the Taliban’s draconian style. Give the Taliban an inch and they will take a mile, as history has proven.
According to an article in International The News:
“….The people of Swat and other parts of Malakand Division have made it abundantly clear that they want Shariah as they believe it would make their area peaceful and facilitate quick and affordable delivery of justice.”
“….So strong was the reaction in the Western media that an American TV channel in a report termed the “deal” as capitulation to the militants. It wrongly claimed that the whole of NWFP would now be under Shariah and that strict Islamic law would be enforced. It also stressed that the Pakistan government gave up its sovereignty, that secular law was over and that the Taliban would henceforth impose their tough Islamic laws in Swat and beyond. Other Western media outlets argued that the Taliban got what they wanted after the government agreed to impose Islamic law and suspend the military operation across much of northwest Pakistan.”
“….Unfortunately, much of this criticism is misplaced. This is primarily due to the lack of knowledge about the kind of law that is being proposed for Malakand region and the adjoining Kohistan district of Hazara division. In fact, the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation isn’t much different from a similar law that was enforced in Swat and rest of Malakand division and Kohistan in 1994 and then, with some amendments, in 1999. Some changes have certainly been made to appease Maulana Sufi Mohammad, founder of the Tanzim Nifaz Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) and the foremost campaigner for Shariah in the area, and bring him on board. Some commentators were even asking as to who would sit in the proposed Qazi Courts because they were unaware that such courts already exist in the whole of Malakand division as a result of the previous Shariah and Nizam-e-Adl ordinances and qualified and trained judges renamed Qazis man the Qazi Courts. The argument that the country cannot afford to have two different kinds of law or legal system is also irrelevant because Swat, Chitral, Dir and the new districts Buner and Shangla that comprise Malakand Division were merged into Pakistan as late as 1969 and, therefore, had a special status with their own set of laws. The Nizam-e-Adl Regulation for the area was rather a continuation of the semi-Shariah laws that were already in force in the states of Swat, Dir and Chitral at the time of their merger in Pakistan.”
great post… always nice to hear a new voice and a new perspective…
i wonder though how the more religious minded youth of pakistan views this issue.
Salmah:
I don’t necessarily disagree with the analysis you have provided from The News. Its true, people on the outside may be overplaying it.
But one has to recognize that there is something more here than just a procedural implementation of sharia. It would be naive, I think, to make a claim that this is somehow independent of the growing weakness of the government and increasing influence of the militant elements in the Swat valley. After all, it is a “peace deal.”
Also, the picture that the Pakistani media is painting that the people behind these reforms are somehow not related to (or bolstered by) elements in FATA is questionable.
If this is what the people want then that is what the people want, but in reality it speaks volumes for Pakistan’s weak judicial and centralized government. If people throughout Pakistan want to implement their own judicial system as they please and according to their peoples wishes, then the idea of “Pakistan” is null and void. What exactly is Pakistan then? An association of semi-autonomous states which have the ability to rule themselves as they please? How does that comprise of a unified nation? Actions like these only weaken further, what is already a weak assortment of provinces. If any stability is to reign supreme in Pakistan, and if Pakistan wants to remain as one republic, then implementing different judicial systems as per the wishes of ‘the people’, is not going to create any stability. Sooner or later the map will be an assortment of semi-autonomous states. I dare to assume that that is not what the founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah had in mind. Correct me if I’m wrong but the events in Swat could make for a classic case of the slippery slope theory.
I think there’s a difference though – do they want it because it will mean relative peace in the region, and will allow them to return back to their homes – or do they legitimately want a TNSM-style Sharia?
Shaheryar, I agree. I think there is an inherent danger in allowing the tribal areas to have increasing more autonomy. FATA already has it, but for Malakand to have it may set off a new trend rather than isolating the problem. Obviously it’s too soon to tell, and maybe I’m just overly jaded, but I’m worried.
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