Over the current week, Pakistan’s military defensive (“You certainly are responsible for what we’re now going to do to you”) appeared to merge seamlessly with Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi’s (TNSM’s) verbal offensive (“We are not responsible for whatever happens now in Swat”). No sooner had TNSM spokesman Amir Izzat Khan issued this warning that the army launched its localised Operation Flush Out in the Pir Baba and Dir areas of Swat. On May 5, The News quoted Khan: “We will not be held responsible for lawlessness anymore as the NWFP government has unilaterally established Darul Qaza and appointed Qazis without the TNSM nod. The government must stop the military operation and establish Darul Qaza with mutual consultation before the situation gets out of control.”

Deconstructing the army’s strategy, Daily Times’ editorial on May 5 viewed it as a two-pronged move. “It is confronting the militants in Malakand, having effectively blocked their advance in Lower Dir and Buner; and is talking to TNSM for the establishment of qazi courts in Swat and other districts in exchange for the laying down of arms by the Taliban. The qazi courts approach failed, but its failure brought with it a public disenchantment with Sufi Muhammad’s ability to deliver on his promises. The country was divided over the qazi courts between the conservative opinion that didn’t mind the sharia courts and thought they would bring quick and cheap justice to the people; and liberals who thought there was a barely concealed negation of the state of Pakistan and its sharia laws in Nizam-e-Adl which otherwise looked harmless in its text. When Sufi Muhammad began to talk about Pakistan’s legal system as a kind of gloss to what he was envisaging for Swat, he lost a lot of support and helped bridge the conservative-liberal divide... That’s when the army moved in. Sufi Muhammad also supplied legal interpretations of Darul Qaza (Appeals Court) and Darul Darul Qaza (Higher Appeals Court) when he said they would be separated from the constitutionally empowered judiciary of Pakistan. He lost support even among the supportive clergy when he termed democracy un-Islamic.... One lesson from the operation in Swat is the army has to move in an environment of civilian consensus or it will risk internal lack of cohesion as it fights ‘its own people’. (In Dir and Buner, it was able to reveal not all the Taliban were our ‘own people’).”

... contd.