Peshawar under siege

Another corpse with its hands and head cut off was found in Daudzai near Peshawar on November 10, marking Peshawar as the country’s third city under siege after Karachi and Quetta. In addition to the extermination of people openly opposed to the Taliban, the terrorists have steadily target-killed important police officers. Peshawar is especially targeted as the frontline city that the Taliban would like to control: Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa jail officials have been slaughtered in Lahore while under training. The truth is unsavoury. All three provinces are under attack, only Punjab is less of a victim. If Karachi and Quetta are practically helpless in the face of the growing strength of the terrorists, Lahore, too, is being eaten away at the peripheries since the kidnapping of Governor Salmaan Taseer’s son. The army men killed in Gujrat, some month ago, are no longer a mystery as agents of the Taliban involved in their killing have been captured. Lahore’s kidnappings are said to be connected to the fundraising activities of the Taliban-al Qaeda combine located in North Waziristan. In Quetta’s case, the Supreme Court has held that the government of Balochistan lost its legal right to govern the province. We could be nearing the point where the governments in Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa may have to be similarly declared. Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has lost more territory to the terrorists than other provinces. Kohat, Hangu and Bannu are virtually in the hands of the Taliban who mete out punishments to people there without hindrance, while civil servants stand aside and look to saving their own lives. Kohat, at least, is a strategic city housing an important base of the Pakistan Air Force. People are gradually learning to accept the writ of the Taliban active in the Orakzai-Mohmand tribal agencies. Swat, which once lived under this writ, learned the hard way that living under the Taliban is simply not possible without being coerced beyond endurance. Unfortunately, despite the presence of the army in the region, Swat is again under assault of the warlord who earlier fled to Afghanistan and is now sending his men to kill schoolgirls in the valley. Karachi has seen its good police and FC officials systematically eliminated by the terrorists. Although often confused with common killers, the Taliban have, nevertheless, increased their presence in the city and announced that they will take on the MQM, which wins majority seats in Karachi in the national elections. We might be looking at a war in the coming months as the 2013 election is around the corner. With three provinces under siege and the fourth endangered, what chances do we have of sustaining democracy in a country where the writ of the state does not run in over half the territory and the ‘safe’ parts are also vulnerable to kidnappings and bank robberies? Democracies, they say, do not fight external wars but are tough in internal wars. While our national strategy is more or less decided on the external conflict brewing in Afghanistan, there seems to be no consensus on how to tackle the war against terrorism inside the country. The tendency is to connect this internal war to Afghanistan where we often officially suspect the US and India to plan Pakistan’s undoing through the Taliban. Sadly, an entire community of madrassa, religious parties and non-state actors are supportive of the somewhat weak strategy of blaming terrorism on America and India and recommend an external war, while punishing those who are ‘agents of America’ inside Pakistan and do not agree to fighting this external war. Afflicted with internal conflict, Pakistan is focusing excessively on a possible external war in Afghanistan. The institutions of the state that underpin the country’s democratic system are not in agreement about what is to be done. Furthermore, there is conflict over what Pakistan’s national interest is. The growing outreach of the Taliban has brought the national economy down to its knees. The latest outrage in Peshawar is a reminder that the situation is worsening by the day.