Several points must be noted here. First, although the Taliban are Pakistani, they no longer care that innocent Pakistanis are suffering. They have said that if their detained colleagues are not released as ransom, they (the Taliban) will deal with the captured Mamond youths under Islamic law. This dastardly statement is the fig leaf covering the outlawry of the Taliban of Bajaur possibly mixed with the runaways from Malakand where Sufi Mohammad and his son-in-law, warlord Fazlullah, ruled till they were driven out by the military. The army also went into Bajaur in 2008 but its operation there was perhaps not as conclusive as the one in Malakand.
A word about Bajaur and its tehsil of Mamond. Bajaur is the smallest of the seven administrative units of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and a relatively inaccessible agency. It borders Afghanistan’s Kunar province and Pakistan’s Dir district, a gateway to the Swat Valley in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, making it strategically important to Pakistan and the region. The current population of Bajaur is more than one million. After the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001, fleeing militants crossed the border into Bajaur. The Bajauris treated the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda fighters as guests. The agency still functions as a logistics base for the Taliban on both sides of the Durand Line. The agency’s significance in terrorists’ operational planning is illustrated by the fact that plots targeting London and Barcelona were hatched here.
The tehsil of Mamond has been more amenable to Taliban influence than the other tribal identities in Bajaur, which explains how treacherous the terrorists can be. The Bajaur Taliban were led by the most bloodthirsty warlord named Maulvi Faqir who belonged to Mamond and was able to build up a force of 5,000 fighters in 2002 from there. The Mamond boys who went picnicking close to the Durand Line may have presumed that since they were from Mamond they would be spared. This time, local warlord Mullah Dadullah, ruling the area in the name of al Qaeda and Mullah Omar, was more focused on obeying orders than on distinguishing between those who are loyal to them and those who are not.
The tragedy is that the military has not been able to secure Bajaur the same way that it was able to in the case of Malakand and Swat. By not consolidating the area, the army has allowed elements loyal to the terrorists to become more powerful. On the other hand, those not so loyal have been forced to leave the agency. Bajaur is the smallest agency in terms of land but had become relatively prosperous in economic terms because many of its residents had left for work in the Gulf. Its population was larger than most other agencies and was amenable to Pakistani culture before Sufi Mohammad began his Islamic rejectionism and ultimately took his personal lashkar from Bajaur to Afghanistan to fight the Americans.
Pakistan needs to fight its war against terrorism more resolutely and not be distracted by India at the theoretical level, as the only enemy facing Pakistan in Afghanistan. Pakistan harbours Afghan terrorists on its territory and can hardly complain if Pakistani terrorists like Fazlullah are being harboured on the other side of the Durand Line. It is clear that the Taliban are strapped for cash and are indulging in desperate acts to build up their reserves. However, the kind of pressure that Pakistan should be putting on the terrorists is not being put, in large part because of the self-defeating interpretation placed on the conflict by influential decision-making circles in the country.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 9th, 2011.
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Great example of the pitfall of considering terrorist "freedom fighters" or "strategic assets" - at there core they are terrorist and by definition they have no reservation about destroying innocent lives to achieve whatever goal.
Can we expect these ruthless murderers to have any empathy for the families of these boys? Their actions continue to stoop way below our imagination and it is anyone’s guess what their next course of action will be! The last few weeks alone prove the barbaric and lawless nature of these terrorists. We witnessed an attack on the mosque, mass killings in Iraq, another attack during the Eid celebrations and now the kidnapping of these boys. We also cannot forget the brutal killing of the police commander caught on tape. No one seems to be spared from their brutality and we all have become well aware that they will cross all lines of humanity to further their evil agenda.
We can only hope that these boys will be released without any harm. Unfortunately, it’s the innocent who continue to suffer the most. We fully support and encourage Pakistani authorities to continue their mission against these terrorists. These terrorist continue to harm Pakistani citizens and threaten Pakistan’s sovereignty and the need to eliminate this threat once and for all is at the all time high.
Free all Taliban prisoners in the country? That's a bit far fetched in my opinion. I thought a few high value personalities might have been reasonable, but "all" prisoners? Jeez. These guys really seem to be spineless, clueless dumbnuts who have no idea how the world works. I cant even come to think how they ruled over a whole country (Afghanistan) looking at their maturity level and wisdom
SA: How convenient, eh? Why does it seem disturbing to you? The ET must have put the real picture where the pale children will hopelessly looking at camera while the bearded monsters were aiming guns at them. This nation's conscience has been in a pathetically callous slumber where nothing loud awakes it. Nothing disturbing moves it. If the same children were taken away by the US, the Pakistani media would have forced the 180 million of its viewers to take to the streets against the brute enemy. But since the Taliban are holding the children here, the Pakistanis have maintained a shameless silence. Shame!. Shame!
This image is disturbing. Please have it removed!!
I think your analysis is somewhat misplaced. All Pakistanis condemn the abduction of innocent students from our soil. I hardly think our leadership regardless of how inept is actively working against the civilians of the state. This act just shows how desperate and cowardly the anti state criminals are. They have no morals, no honour and no decency. They have stooped to any low including killing worshippers in mosques during Ramadan, killing children in bazaars and blowing up girls schools. You seem to forget that there is ample evidence to support that these criminals are oftern foreigners or on the active payroll of foreign agencies out to destabilize Pakistan. The fact that these cowards now resort to abducting children is ample evidence that they are losing and becoming more and more desperate. What Pakistan needs is a first strike policy where we actively hunt down these anti state criminals in Afghanistan.