Pakistan: the cost of combating the Taliban
My Pakistani journalist friend was clear. “This is the first serious effort by the Pakistani army since 9/11 to eliminate the Taliban.” In other words, the military assault to oust the militants from Swat shows that Pakistan’s strategic thinking has changed.
An intelligence contact reinforced the point. “It may have been America’s war in the past, but it’s no longer so,” he said. “It’s now our war and our security at stake.”
After General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani took over as army chief last year, he reportedly initiated a purge of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to rid it of officers linked to the Taliban and other extremist groups. Then, on Wednesday, militants attacked the ISI headquarters in Lahore – a clear signal that they no longer regard the organs of Pakistani state security as patrons or allies.
Back in the 1980s, the ISI, with American backing, fostered Islamist groups to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Even after 9/11, when the Americans moved against the Taliban, the Pakistanis kept up their links, in case they might use them in Afghanistan again in the future.
Militants who attacked civilians in Pakistani cities or abroad would evade arrest or mysteriously escape from jail, because they could be deployed against India over Kashmir.
General Musharraf, the former president, was a master of what the Chinese used to call “a policy that walks on two legs”. He would ban armed groups only to let them re-emerge under new name, and tell the Americans he was doing everything to combat religious extremists, while doing deals with them on the side.
But the Taliban takeover of Swat is regarded as a threat to the Pakistani state itself. That’s why so many in the security forces – I wouldn’t say all of them – have changed their way of thinking.
But combating the Taliban creates its own problems. More than two million people have been displaced – apart from the strain this puts on the communities now hosting the refugees, some might blame the government and become radicalised.
The Lahore elite, who were scarcely aware of unrest in the tribal areas on the Afghan border, now fear going to a downtown restaurant in case it’s bombed in a revenge attack.
Pakistanis, in the security forces and beyond, are only now seeing the consequences of their government’s policy of first patronising the Taliban, and then trying to wipe them out.
– Lindsey Hilsum’s latest video report on the looming humanitarian crisis in Swat: