Related Stories Shilpa Shetty trumps Arunachal againThe vital differenceWhat more is needed to stoke reaction?Hindutva and radical Islam: Where the twain do meetThe fabrications of government

 Pakistan has lost control over half its territory. In all probability it will regain that control at some time in the future. But the fact that half of the country’s territory is today outside the writ of the Pakistani state shows how far things have been allowed to fall.

Information that reaches India suggests that the troubles in Balochistan are much worse than what becomes public knowledge — a determined effort has been made to black out what is happening there. In the northwest, the Maliks and Khans were already losing out to the Taliban — the latter had begun replacing them even in governmental committees, a better way to route outlays to itself. Since then, these persons as well as the political mullahs through whom the area was being controlled have come to be viewed as instruments of the enemy. Hence, administration has crumbled. Two ‘accords’ and a third attempted ‘accord’ have come to nothing. Each ‘accord’ was seen as, and was in fact an acknowledgement that the Pakistani army was not able to contain the situation: in the Miramshah Accord, for instance, the most recent one to unravel, the tribals agreed not to attack Pakistani troops in return for the withdrawal of troops from the region. And in return for tribals being allowed to continue to bear arms, the government agreed to release 165 tribal militants and provide handsome ‘compensation’. Each ‘accord’ has been terminated at the will of the tribals and the army has been able to do nothing in the matter.

The sway of the Taliban has now spread to FATA. In this region, the three agencies most affected are south Waziristan, north Waziristan and Bajaur. But Talibanisation has started spreading from FATA to the adjacent ‘settled districts’ of NWFP. In places like Tank, Dera Ismail Khan, Swat, and so on, the Taliban roam the streets freely and enforce their ‘values’. Barber shops and video parlours have been shut down. Men are required to grow beards. Music is banned. Girls have been prohibited from attending school: ‘the card’ is a dread — a postcard is delivered at the house with the photograph of a severed head on one side, and, on the other, a simple note: ‘your daughter XYZ, goes to school ABC, located at...’ Parents have to take their child out of school or risk her life or swiftly dispatch her to some other town...

To confound matters, the only instrument through which the areas could be retrieved, the army, is showing signs of strain. It has suffered major casualties and embarrassing reverses. In a series of the most telling events, large numbers of soldiers have ‘surrendered’. In the first instance, close to 300 were reported to have been ‘kidnapped’. They were led by a colonel at the time. There were four officers among them. Not one casualty occurred. The whole lot just got ‘kidnapped’ or they surrendered. Since then, the sequence has been repeated at least twice — with two differences: the tribals called the media over to photograph the soldiers they had captured, and, after making them swear never to fight fellow Muslims again, released them.

By now, the problem is structural. That is, it is not just the mistake of a Musharraf. A quarter of Pakistan’s army consists of Pashtuns. Not just that, major operations are being carried out by the Frontier Corps. This consists of locally recruited Pashtun soldiers, officered by Punjabi army officers. On the other side, earlier, the fighting was largely being done by foreign militants — Chechens, Uzbeks, Arabs. They were being supported by the Taliban. Now it appears that entire tribes and sub-tribes are rising in revolt against the army. Pashtun soldiers are chary of fighting persons from their own tribe, and just as nervous of fighting Pashtuns from other sub-tribes or tribes, for they know that doing so could well trigger a cycle of revenge, a cycle that will last for generations. Nor would sending units of Punjabis help matters: quite the contrary, doing so would transform the hostilities into an ethnic conflict — Punjabis killing Pashtuns will stoke the flames even more vigorously.

But this development should not cause surprise, as my friend, Sushant Sareen, who follows developments in our neighbours almost by the hour, points out. The army is itself steeped in the culture of jihad, and so will naturally be reluctant to kill those who are, after all, sacrificing their lives in jihad. Even in 1971, the situation was not as grave from a soldier’s point of view as it is now: in that war, he, a Punjabi, was killing Bengalis. Today Pashtuns are being set to kill Pashtuns. Moreover, unlike the Bengalis in 1971, these groups fight back: they are well-armed; they are very well trained; their motivation is stronger than that of even the indoctrinated Pakistani soldier; they are masters of their terrain; they are not ‘primitives’. On the contrary, they are extremely sophisticated in their tactics and strategy.

Could there be more than just morale here? Could it be that because of its pervasive involvement in the economy and administration, because of the enormous collateral perquisites that are given to officers — from plots to control of ‘heavy’ enterprises — the army, in particular its officer class, has softened? The performance of the army in Kargil, in Balochistan and now in NWFP certainly suggests that this is possible. The main debility, however, is different: the army has been reared to kill and prevail over ‘imbecile kafirs’, and it must balk at killing fellow Muslims.

It is often suggested that after 9/11 and his decision to join the American war, Musharraf cleaned out the bearded generals. He may have shunted out some individuals. But the American war and joining it have certainly put the ‘moderates’ in the army on the defensive. The Islamists have been proven right. One minor indication of this was visible in the Lal Masjid incident. Here is a mosque not in the far away, wild tribal areas, but in Islamabad itself. The entire country is under army rule. The ISI as well as intelligence agencies of the army itself are in each nook and cranny of the country. How could such a vast armoury have been accumulated in the mosque and the adjacent madrassa without the complicity of elements inside these organisations?