Swat’s Taliban recruits — Part II: The Taliban turncoat who fears their return

Habibullah,the former Taliban recruit, seems to have had strong sympathies for the militants.

SWAT: Habibullah has disowned the Taliban – but only after being held captive by the army for 11 months following his arrest from Marghazar, a village a few kilometres from Mingora.

From his comments, the former Taliban recruit seems to have had strong sympathies for the militants. He still feels strongly about the Taliban’s ideology, even saying it is in accordance with the tenets of Islam. His experience of the Taliban’s politics, however, has turned him against his former leaders.

“The Taliban spoke for the rights of the poor in the beginning. (Tehreek-Nifaz-e-Shariah-e-Mohammadi leader) Maulana Fazlullah gave many people in this area hope for change. But then they started to do inhumane acts; that is when the problems started,” he says.

Habibullah still staunchly believes in the application of Shariah law, but he feels the general support the Taliban received in this area was largely because of the government’s official agreement over Nizam-e-Adal, which allowed an alternative judicial system to function in the Swat valley.

“When the government made a pact with the (Taliban) chief commanders, some people thought that since the government is doing it, we should too. Others who did not want to, had to out of fear,” he adds.

According to locals in the area, Habibullah was known to be a Taliban-appointed commander. The man himself claims innocence: “I was friendly with the Taliban but I was never part of them.”

Either way, Habibullah was forced to endure awful conditions in captivity. “They kept me in solitary confinement for almost a year and bulldozed my house in front of my family after my arrest.”

He argues that his innocence is proven by the fact that he was released without charge. Before he was freed, he went through the three-month de-radicalisation program, which the military conducted with all those arrested but not directly involved in crime during Swat’s militant period.

A military spokesperson in the Swat valley says that during the operation all arrests were processed according to official regulations.

“Anyone kept by the military for more than 24 hours meant the person was in a ‘grey area’. We then conducted an investigation into his extent of involvement,” says Lt Col Arif Mehmood, who has served in the area for over three years.

According to Mehmood, the investigations to clear someone involve ascertaining if a person joined the Taliban out of fear or for financial benefit, and it can take as long as a year to work this out.

For Habibullah, making a new life will take a long time. He says he still fears that the Taliban may return to power. “The military has control over the area. That is why there is peace. But if they leave, we have such weak policing that the Talibans can come back,” he says.

[Names have been changed to protect identities.]

Published in The Express Tribune, October 26^th, 2011.