Pakistan: A Hard Country (78 page)

Then we got on to the Taleban, and for me at least the rationality of her views disintegrated. She declared that ‘we can’t talk to the Taleban unless they lay down their arms’, but on the question of how to make them do that, it seemed that the Pakistani army should do everything and nothing. She blamed the military for not attacking the Taleban, but also for using too much violence and kil ing civilians. She declared that the Pakistani army should act to shut the Afghan Taleban training camps in Waziristan, but also that she was firmly opposed to military operations in Waziristan. When I asked her how then the camps could be shut, she replied that ‘Everyone knows that they are run by the ISI.

The ISI has only to give the order, and the camps wil be shut.’4

THE POLICE AND THE ARMY

Given attitudes like these in the NWFP government, it was not surprising that morale in the NWFP police in the summer of 2008 had reached dangerously low levels. As one of the force’s commanders admitted:

We have largely lost the institutional memory that we used to have, and we have very little good intel igence coming in ... Real policing, going out and finding out what is happening, has become virtual y non-existent. We are policing by the seat of our pants, not going about it in an organized and professional manner, but just reacting to what happens.

I interviewed some of the same junior police officers in both August 2008 and July 2009, and the change in their mood was a useful indicator of how things in general had changed in the city over the intervening year. In August 2008 I spoke to two assistant sub-inspectors of police (ASIs) from Hayatabad, the western suburb of Peshawar, about the situation in what the London police would cal their ‘manor’. Both men were in their early twenties: Asif with a round, bearded face like a cheerful pirate, Mushtaq clean-shaven, darker and more formidable-looking. ‘Security here is getting worse day by day,’

Mushtaq said. ‘The Taleban drive by our police station in pick-up trucks, showing off their Kalashnikovs and rocket-propel ed grenades, and we are not al owed to do anything about it. Our orders are not to arrest them, to shoot only if they shoot at us first. It’s terrible for our prestige!’

To which Asif replied urgently, ‘Yes, but, Mushtaq, they are so much better armed than we are! If we attacked them, you know what would happen. Even if we won that fight, they would come back at night and destroy our station. Much better to ignore them.’ Humiliating, no doubt, but also without doubt entirely correct. As a righteous Westerner I should have supported Mushtaq; actual y my human sympathies were al with Asif.

But when I met Asif again in July 2009, his mood had improved considerably.

A year ago, things were getting worse day by day, but now they are a bit better. For example, we have orders to open fire on the Taleban on sight. This order came after the military operation started in Swat. There was a wave of shootings and bombings in response, but stil it is better that we began to fight ... The public mood has also changed. In the past, when we asked people for information about the Taleban they would shut their doors. Now, when the Taleban come to an area we are quickly informed about them ... Our pay has also increased, though not nearly enough. With bonuses, an ASI now gets Rs14,000 a month and a constable Rs9,000 [compared to a mere Rs6,000 in 2008]. It is not nearly enough for the risks we run, but better than it was. Though it is stil not as much as the Taleban pay their fighters – they get Rs12,000 – 15,000.

What Asif told me reflected what a top police officer in Peshawar had told me eleven months earlier about what the police needed to do: We have to reoccupy the land, start policing places on the ground and delivering security to the people. The US has given us two computers, but that doesn’t help much and nor do Western police advisers – what the hel do they know about the realities of this society? Whenever you give us something we just come up with highfalutin’ phrases which satisfy you, and you have no idea whether anything has real y changed. This isn’t what is necessary. What’s necessary is that the IG [Inspector-General – head of the provincial police] and other senior officers should pick up guns and go out themselves on operations. A constable on Rs7,000 a month won’t risk his life if his officers are not there with him.

I mentioned the plaques to fal en British police officers in the cathedral.

‘Exactly,’ he replied. As so often when meeting with senior policemen in Pakistan and India, a slightly uneasy, even uncanny feeling came over me at the contrast between this highly intel igent, courteous and candid figure and the reputation of the force to which he belongs.

In this case, the uncanny feeling was increased by the fact that the officer with whom I was speaking bore a quite remarkable resemblance to the late David Niven in middle age: aquiline, humorous features, balding head, clipped moustache and equal y clipped accent.

In fact, being rather light-headed from running around in the heat of a Peshawar August, there were moments during the interview when I imagined that I actual y was watching David Niven playing a police officer of the British Raj; and, for that matter, if such an officer had been suddenly reincarnated and joined in our conversation, I do not suppose that he and his Pakistani successor would have found much to disagree about.

This officer was a leading proponent of the creation of special police brigades to hold territory against the Taleban after the army has cleared it. These would be paid at higher rates than the rest of the police (whose pay should also be raised radical y) and equipped to the same level as the Rangers and other paramilitary units under the army.

He said that the creation of such brigades would improve morale and reduce what he admitted was a real y serious problem – the leaking of information to the Taleban by police sympathizers. ‘Only a few real y support the Taleban ideology, but a great many share the view of the population that this is not Pakistan’s war.’

I was reminded of what a senior policeman in Karachi had told me a few years before: that when he received orders to carry out an operation to catch Islamist terrorists, he made the plans with only two trusted col eagues. ‘Al the rest get the orders when they are already in the jeeps and close to the destination – otherwise, every operation we planned would be blown in advance.’

By July 2009, the Inspector-General of Police in the NWFP, Malik Naveed Khan, said that 2,500 elite police had been trained, and had contributed to a great improvement in the situation. The police were also training and equipping special community police to defend their areas against the Taleban – ‘not like lashkars, because these are chosen, armed and control ed by us, so there is no risk of them changing sides or becoming dacoits’. He said that, thanks to al this, the increase in pay and the sense of new determination from the top, police morale had improved enormously over the previous few months.

Above al , though, he said, the change in mood was due to the Swat operation, and the transformation of civil – military relations which it reflected.

As of the summer of 2008 these had been as bad as could wel be imagined. The politicians’ views of the army have already been described. A retired colonel of my acquaintance exploded in response:

Those bastards! If we are supporting the militants in secret, how come more than 1,500 of us have been kil ed fighting them? It is the politicians who are running scared and doing deals with the militants. They just don’t know who they are more scared of, Washington or the Taleban. So they run to Washington and whine and grovel, and then they come back and order us to fight harder. Then when we do and people are kil ed, they get scared of their voters and put al the blame on us. They declare a truce and start peace negotiations again with the Taleban, and al the gains we have made at God knows what cost in lives go up in smoke. For months now, Kayani [General Ashfaq Kayani, chief of the army staff in succession to Musharraf] has been asking for clear political support for military operations and from al the ANP and most of the PPP has got nothing but shuffling excuses. Are you surprised we have military coups in this country?

A senior serving officer speaking in Peshawar in August 2008 was more measured:

We have never received clear political backing for military operations against the Taleban because no one is wil ing to take responsibility for civilian deaths and displacement. After al , it is not easy for any government to take responsibility for creating hundreds of thousands of refugees among its own people. But I must say that this was also true of Musharraf, not just of the civilian politicians who have taken over. That is also why we need special anti-terrorism forces which don’t cause so much col ateral damage as the army, because we are trained for ful -scale war and don’t real y know how to do things any other way, though of course we try to keep civilian casualties as low as possible.

Another problem to which the general drew attention was the unreliability of the Frontier Corps, the local y recruited paramilitary police, or khassadars, and the Frontier Constabulary, who are supposed to patrol the line between FATA and the NWFP.

The Frontier Corps men are linked to local tribal society. That is why they are essential, because they know what is happening, so provide vital intel igence. Also, using non-Pashtun troops is very unpopular, as we found in 2004. But the problem is that they hate kil ing their own people, above al when many people say that this is for the sake of America. If enough of them are kil ed by the militants, they wil often fight back; but they have been fighting for five years now and are very tired and becoming demoralized. As for the khassadars and the Constabulary, they are now useless. They just sit in their posts and do nothing.

This tension between local knowledge and local loyalty is an old one.

The British, who created the units out of which the Frontier Corps was formed, ful y recognized the desirability of using local troops whenever possible, and most of the troops stationed in the region were in fact local y recruited. This also meant that the British faced repeated mutinies and desertions whenever real y serious trouble flared with the local tribes, and often had to disband their Pathan units.5 Similarly, since 2004, the Frontier Corps has seen repeated incidents of units refusing to fight or even deserting en masse to the Taleban. This reflected not just Pathan affinities but also a history of the Frontier Corps being underfunded and poorly equipped compared to the regular army (and not included in the benefits of the Fauji Foundation).

By 2010 this was beginning to change, but, like the NWFP police, the FC had stil received astonishingly limited help from the US – even in the area of effective modern body armour.

THE TURNING POINT

Faithful to its electoral promise of making peace with the Taleban, and responding to the wil of its electorate, in February 2009 the ANP

government of the NWFP negotiated a settlement with the Taleban of Swat based on the adoption by the national government of the Nizam-e-Adl (‘System of Justice’) regulation for Swat and the adjoining districts of the Malakand administrative division. This stipulated the exclusive rule of Islamic justice in Swat District, as wel as an amnesty for al Taleban fighters there – in effect conceding Taleban control of much of the district. In return, the Taleban were to cease attacks on the army, police and local population.

According to the agreement, they were also supposed to lay down their arms, though no one seriously expected this to happen. On the contrary, there was a widespread expectation that the Taleban would use Swat as a training ground for the jihad in Afghanistan. On 13 April, the agreement was passed into law by the National Assembly in Islamabad, and signed by President Zardari. To judge by media reports and my own interviews, it enjoyed the support of the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis, the Mohajirs of Karachi being the only large-scale exception.

As wil be seen, on paper at least the Nizam-e-Adl agreement was much less unprecedented, radical and extensive than appeared at first sight. The local Taleban certainly saw it that way, pointing out that it only covered justice, whereas a true Islamic system covers al aspects of life, including government, politics and economics. Responding to the wil of the electorate, al the parties in the National Assembly except for the MQM voted for the agreement. However, it elicited immense criticism in the Western media and among Pakistani liberals, who saw it as a catastrophic defeat for the Pakistani state, as the de facto surrender of control over Swat to the Taleban, and even as part of an inexorable march of the Taleban that could take them to power in Islamabad, just as the Taleban in Afghanistan had swept from province to province in the 1990s.

In fact, however, the Nizam-e-Adl agreement proved to be the start of what appears to be an important turning point in the Pakistani state’s struggle with the Taleban – not the beginning of the end, but at least the end of the beginning, as Churchil said. Oddly enough, this was because the Taleban shared the liberals’ and the Western media’s assessment of the extent of the government defeat; and because both the Taleban and the West ignored the critical role of Pakistani and Pathan public opinion in the shaping of events and of policy.