26.05.2013 ‘Peace for our time’
Taliban collect taxes and dispense
justice. They control the cross border trade and
conflict economy. They are a state not within the state but a state
outside the state and for that matter an ideological state. Are we talking to a
sovereign state at war with the state of Pakistan?
By Kashif Noon
‘Peace for our times’. These words resound across modern times signifying a complex and layered reality. Neville Chamberlain uttered these words before World War II. That brings us to the cliché that ‘history repeats itself’. This has often clouded better judgments and is more of an explanatory sentence than analytical or even descriptive. History does not repeat itself. It is only a human attempt to rationalise political mistakes in hindsight; a solace of some sort. History is linear not circular. It cannot be. Laws of social science cannot defy Physics and time.
The incumbent governments of Mian Nawaz Sharif and Messer’s Imran Khan are both aiming for ‘peace for our times’ with the TTP. Let us attempt an un-packaging of the TTP. It is a fact that the TTP has considerable following and strength. They control territory. They are resolute fighters. Their operational planning and resources are considerable. What is the source of their strength? The primary source of their strength is the ideology. Through this ideology they have captured the tribesmen’s rationality but not their imagination.
Ideologies are arrogant and exclusive. Even liberalism is arrogant. This is the reason that men and women are swayed by them to do things that they would not do otherwise. This arrogance permeates into the followers and makes them feel more powerful than they are as individuals. Ideologies are force multipliers; they ‘bound’ the rationality as Herbert Simon would say. The TTP knows this ‘bounding’ trick and it uses this to maximum effect.
Fata has been mistreated by successive governments — both military and civilian. A lawless and Rights-less land unfortunately became a battleground of domestic and international politics in this same order. There was and is a huge legitimacy gap for the state of Pakistan. This was filled by the Taliban easily and effectively. This legitimacy capture was implemented by a merciless ‘fear factor’. Imagination does not respect fear, rationality does. For the people of Fata, support to the TTP was rational not imaginative. The Taliban justice, as seen mostly in Swat and elsewhere, was and is exhibitionist; the core strength of fear factor. They collect taxes and dispense justice. They control the cross border trade and conflict economy. They are a state not within the state but a state outside the state and for that matter an ideological state.
It must be realised that the TTP, ironically wherever they control territory, are defacto sovereign. This fact, somehow, has not occurred to most. The pervasive thinking is that we are dealing with a guerrilla group/s that were created due to the US war on terror and the government of Pakistan siding with USA. The drones attacks are another reason cited for the TTP creation. The Pakhtunwali tenet of revenge is another argument.
Notwithstanding all of the above, it is somewhat not understood that creation of Taliban due to a foreign war is fallacious direct reasoning, but it has an inverse reasoning to it. Taliban were not created because of the war across the border but due (emphasis added) to a war happening across the border. Well it’s not a puzzle of semantics but a fact that war across the border created the opportunity of state creation, of seizing territorial control, filling up of a void that the state of Pakistan had created as a deliberate policy. The war entrepreneurs flourished. The rational choice prevailed to decapitate the Maliks (literally) and seize control, get rich, become Amirs and acquire the ultimate objective; power.
The TTP was always there in the form of affiliates of their Jihadi brothers from across the world which the state of Pakistan had collected painstakingly with Alexandrian ambitions. It was a rational choice by empowered groups of locals, not necessarily religious scholars (Hakimullah Mehsud is no clergy); drones et al (not that it is not condemnable) came later and were greatest propaganda tool for the TTP not in the tribal areas itself but for their telephone calls to the media houses from undisclosed locations. They sold the idea and we swallowed it hook line and sinker and here we are ready to talk to the TTP.
The question is are we talking to a sovereign state at war with the state of Pakistan or are we talking to a disgruntled part of population who have taken up arms against the state because they were wronged in some perverted way by the people of Pakistan not the state of Pakistan (emphasis added) because it is the people of Pakistan that they punish through terror attacks.
We have set course for appeasement and Sir Edward Grey’s, the foreign secretary of Great Britain, foreboding words enter my thoughts, “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime” (August 3, 1914) just before the World War I. History perhaps is cyclical and repeats itself. All my rational theorisation when I started this piece is perhaps an academic theoretical and useless exercise. May it not be theoretical, may it not be useless, may history be linear. I wish and I pray.