The rise of ‘Talqaeda’

He’s not your typical-looking militant, nothing like the tall, ascetic Osama bin Laden or the choleric Ayman al-Zawahiri. He says nothing to a visiting reporter about destroying the evil West or raining vengeance down on the infidels. Sufi Muhammad, by most measures, is what any Canadian might affectionately call grandpa—in the right setting. But here in Mingora, the main city of Pakistan’s Swat valley, 150 km northwest of the capital Islamabad, the moniker doesn’t quite fit. Given the fact that he is surrounded by black-turbaned militants, the soft-spoken octogenarian inspires a different kind of respect than the one normally bestowed on elders, a respect based on fear.

In Swat, a mountainous former tourist mecca wracked by nearly two years of conflict and now overrun by Taliban militants, Muhammad seems an unlikely peace-broker. The head of Pakistan’s most feared militant outfit, the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi (TNSM), and a one-time jihadi who now claims to have renounced violence, Muhammad is positioning himself to be the new face of the Pakistani Taliban. This is the man whom Pakistani government officials view as a member of the “moderate” Taliban, a man dedicated not to global jihad but to Islam and Pashtun traditions, who can perhaps bring calm to paradise. Indeed, a Feb. 16 deal, brokered by him, between the provincial government in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Taliban militants led by his son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah, has brought some reprieve to Swat.

Also at Macleans.ca: Photo Gallery—Pakistan’s dangerous Swat Valley

But that agreement, and others like it with militants in parts of Pakistan’s ungoverned Tribal Areas, have led to international consternation that Pakistan is not committed to the fight against extremism. They have also raised new concerns that the authorities, by signing such peace deals, have left the extremists free to impose their harsh rule over the region, and pursue with impunity their war against the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan.

It is also unclear how much this fragile peace can help Swat. After nearly two years of violence, the picturesque valley has been reduced to a tattered shadow of its former self. Officials estimate it would take somewhere in the range of US$500 million, a princely fortune in Pakistani terms, to rehabilitate what was once a thriving tourist haven—assuming tourists would want to visit an area where militants espousing a harsh vision of Islam hold sway. Hotels with names like Rose Palace, White Palace and Paradise City sit empty on the green slopes of snow-peaked mountains, while in the remote villages where tribal Pashtuns eke out an impoverished existence, the Taliban is celebrating a victory.

Seated on the floor in a tiny, windowless room wedged into a back corner of his compound in Mingora, a small gas-powered heater aimed at his feet, the 80-year-old Sufi Muhammad chooses his words carefully when talking about the deal he’s put together. It’s rare for him to give private interviews, especially these days, with his health failing and the situation in Swat on a knife’s edge. “Since I was freed from jail, I have worked hard to end the violence here,” he says, referring to the six years he spent behind bars, starting in 2002, after returning from a failed jihad in support of the Afghan Taliban after the U.S.-led invasion of late 2001. “But with God’s help, I have succeeded.”

That may be overstating the case slightly. Though Pakistani authorities have capitulated to Taliban demands to impose sharia in Swat—the main feature of the deal—the odds may be against the agreement sticking if history is any indicator: similar agreements with Fazlullah in May 2007 and May 2008 crumbled before they were even implemented. This time around, though, with Muhammad acting as intermediary, some progress has been made. All-out war between the Pakistani military and the militants has been replaced with a tense peace, and sharia courts have started operating, although Muhammad has complained about how slowly they are being established, and has threatened to pull the plug on the agreement if the process is not speeded up.

Meanwhile, there have been reports that the Taliban have already begun cementing their harsh control over the region—only underscoring the concerns about Pakistani authorities having sanctioned a safe haven for extremists. Add to that recent atrocities, like last September’s suicide truck bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, and gunmen brazenly attacking the Sri Lankan cricket team’s convoy in the normally peaceful city of Lahore, and the question arises: are militants in the process of winning over large areas of Pakistan? Certainly the attention of Pakistan’s all-powerful military has been diverted from the fight against militancy, in the face of increased tensions with India after Pakistani-connected terrorists struck in Mumbai last November. Meanwhile, word that Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, which in the past helped foster the Taliban and other extremists, is continuing to support militants in the hope of exercising influence through them in Afghanistan, only adds another ominous dimension to this story. And even more dangerously for Pakistan, the agreements with extremists have come just as central authority in the country is being severely undermined by a government crisis—one that has, in itself, bolstered the militants’ antipathy toward secular authority.

That political instability has its roots in the ongoing power struggle between the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), headed by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), under Pakistan’s current president, Asif Ali Zardari, the husband of assassinated former PPP leader Benazir Bhutto. The fuse for this immediate crisis was lit on Feb. 25, when the sitting judges of Pakistan’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling barring Sharif and his brother, Shahbaz, from holding political office.