ANP leader calls for arming Swat villagers

ISLAMABAD: Afzal Khan Lala is an amazing man. After having been in the mainstream politics for decades, the veteran Pakhtun nationalist once again made headlines recently when he defied the worst Taliban pressure in the Swat valley by refusing to leave his beleaguered village.

But now even Afzal Khan’s optimism is gradually waning. Although the octogenarian leader continues to remain a symbol of hope for hundreds of thousands of people in Malakand and beyond, he is increasingly becoming unsure about the fate of the troubled valley.

‘I’m still not prepared to blame the army for the current mess,’ Afzal Lala said during an informal chat at the Frontier House in Islamabad, where he was recently brought in for medical check-up.

‘But I also know such military operations cannot deliver if there is no planning or strategy to consolidate the gains through administrative action once the army withdraws.’

While in Islamabad Afzal Khan Lala has remained in touch with the highly disturbing developments taking place in Mingora and various other parts of Malakand region.

However, his view is that even this time the army will, at best, be able to secure the main towns and villages by pushing back the Taliban to the mountains. ‘But you can’t expect the army to continue to man the streets for ever,’ he said.

‘In order to do so, we need to have a proper administrative system, backed by a civilian security establishment.’ Otherwise, he says, the Taliban may soon be back, only to inflict further pain on the local people.

Like most others, he too doesn’t seem to have a solution. However, he believes that everyone, including his comrades in the Awami National Party, has to share the blame for the mess that the Malakand region is at the moment.

According to him, the military’s half-hearted action has convinced many people that it is either in league with the Taliban, or is not interested in fully eliminating them.

He accuses the ANP government of not even discussing the issue with him or other veteran politicians from the area before striking peace deals with the Taliban.

Certainly he is not the only one from the Malakand region who either accuses the army of carrying out ill-conceived or half-hearted operations in the past, or blames the NWFP government and Islamabad for abandoning the anti-Taliban forces in the region by literally surrendering to wishes of armed militants.

For many such people it was a foregone conclusion that such moves would embolden the armed religious extremists, who soon started venturing out of Swat.

Then there are quite a few former civil servants, who had served in Malakand, who are convinced that it has been mishandled from the day the old justice system, drawn on the lines of Sharia, of the former princely states was abolished without replacing it with an equally effective system.

If the situation was exploited by the religious extremists, only Islamabad is to be blamed for it, says a former commissioner of Malakand.

Much debate is now going on about the latest military offensive. Reports coming from Mardan and adjoining areas speak of a real exodus of internally displaced people from Mingora and many big and small villages during the hours when curfew was lifted.

Those working for the United Nations Refugee agency UNHCR and humanitarian organisations like the ICRC are alarmed by the speed with which migration is taking place from the conflict zone.

It’s quite possible that it may turn out to be the biggest internal migration ever to have taken place in Pakistan.

For those like the 82-year-old Afzal Khan Lala, this is important but may only provide temporary relief.

His belief is that along with the current military operation the authorities should start to think about the post-operation strategy. And he believes if the police and constabulary are too demoralised and not prepared to be deployed there, the authorities should seriously think of arming the Swat villagers.

‘These are the people who have lost their sons and brothers during repeated onslaughts by the Taliban, and if properly armed, the Pakhtun concept of ‘badla’ (revenge) can make them fight back’.

According to him, this may not be the ideal solution, but in the given situation, it might be the only option left with the civil and military authorities to keep the Taliban at bay.