Sufi too weak to deliver on promises

Sunday, 26 Apr, 2009

By Ismail Khan

Sufi Mohammad likes to be outspoken while airing his views, but on that day he was lost for words. His head buried in his hands, he sat listening intently as officials unveiled evidence linking Swat militants to the April 15 suicide bombing in Charsadda that killed 15 men, mostly police.

The evidence included a video footage of a teenaged suicide bomber who had earlier tried to target Sikandar Hayat Sherpao, the eldest son of former interior minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao.

A militant seized from the scene of Charsadda bombing in wounded condition said it all. The plan was conceived in Charbagh, Swat, and executed by militants from Swat —two months after the NWFP government signed a peace deal with the head of defunct Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi.

Sufi promised to issue a religious decree against armed militant activities at a public meeting in Mingora three days later.

Far from it, the octogenarian leader set new deadlines to the government to fully implement the Nizam-i-Adl Regulation by April 23 and termed the Constitution as un-Islamic.

‘He played the wrong tape,’ commented a senior figure in the NWFP government who met Sufi in Maidan, Dir. ‘This is not the kind of things he had promised us to talk about.’

A deeply dismayed Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti, who had planned to visit Mingora the following day to announce, among other things, a grand reconciliation jirga to let bygones be bygones and burry the hatchet, cancelled the trip

More bad news was in store as hundreds of militants entered neighbouring Buner and Shangla districts and set up a base in Hassankhel, in the tribal territory of Kala Dhaka of Mansehra district

This was a calculated move, according to some officials. The militants had in the past made similar attempts to cut off the vital Karakoram Highway linking Pakistan with China.

What was more alarming about the militants’ advance in Buner was the threat they posed to the plains of Peshawar Valley in the adjoining Mardan and Swabi.

With Swat firmly under their belt, and making a foothold in Dir, it did not leave any doubt in the minds of policy-makers about the Taliban’s intentions —to control Malakand.

If this were not enough, the collapse of local resistance to the Taliban advance in Buner, in the absence of a state security backup, rang alarm bells. That Buner could fall so easily to the Taliban was depressing and alarming.

The government dispatched a team to speak to Sufi Mohammad about the ‘violations’ of the peace agreement. That the TNSM leader is a difficult and unpredictable interlocutor was well-known, but what was hitherto not clear to the government was his relative inability to rein in militants.

'The old man has been changing goal posts,’ commented a government official. Initially, the TNSM chief had promised to seek the militants’ disarming. This didn’t happen.

Then, he promised that he would issue a fatwa against militancy in Swat as and when the government announced the enforcement of Nizam-i-Adl Regulation. He didn’t do it.

He changed tack again and asked the government to sign the document first before he could lean on the Taliban to disarm.

All eyes were fixed on Sufi Mohammad when President Asif Ali Zardari finally affixed his signature to the regulation documents after much trepidation. But Sufi went ahead and set his own deadline for its enforcement.

However, as Sufi dragged his feet, the Swat Taliban stepped up their activities. The government decided to hold the TNSM chief to his words. ‘It was time for plain talk,’ said an official.

What the black-turbaned leader had to say to the government team was disappointing. According to a source privy to the last round of talks with Sufi Mohammad, the TNSM chief narrated an incident to highlight his own helplessness in the situation.

He, however, did say that the militants would lay down arms before a Qazi and promised, yet again, to issue a statement against those continuing to indulge in militancy after the enforcement of the Nizam-i-Adl Regulation earlier this month.

Officials now concede that they have been left with few policy options vis-à-vis Sufi Mohammad, knowing his limitations and unpredictability.

A statement from him denouncing militancy would at least give the government the moral authority to go after violent extremists.

The militants have upped the ante but the government, say the officials, would refrain from reacting to their violent moves in Swat and not move against them till it put in place the judicial structure in line with its commitment to enforce the new regulation.

According to the newly devised policy, the government would continue to show restraint in Swat till the full enforcement of the regulation but would respond to any militant provocations outside its limits. The political and military leadership, they say, are on the same page on the new strategy.

‘There is a lot of concern and a sense of urgency to do something about it before it is too late,’ said one senior official. ‘We want to give them enough rope to hang themselves,’ said one senior official.

But as one commentator observed, given the state of denial and paralysis, it was quite possible that the government would give them so much rope that one day it would realise that it had run out of rope to hang them.

Courtesy: DAWN