Share this story!            

New report highlights intricate nature of NWFP insurgency

* Joshua White’s study seeks to provide framework for understanding religious and political dynamics of the Frontier
* Suggests spreading insurgency demands more integrated, creative measures to bolster state’s political legitimacy and improve its capacity to respond to new threats

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: According to a new study, as the United States looks towards formulating a more comprehensive strategy in the region, it would do well to recognise that Islamism in NWFP remains highly fragmented and solutions to the problems posed by illiberal or insurgent Islamism ultimately require political mainstreaming, which, in turn, calls for legitimate and capable civilian and military state institutions that can set the political boundaries for Islamist participation, and respond effectively to new and unexpected forms of ‘religious’ insurgency.
The study completed by Joshua T White and published by the Centre on Faith and International Affairs is titled ‘Pakistan’s Islamist Frontier: Islamic politics and US policy in Pakistan’s NWFP.’ The author, a doctoral candidate at the Johns Hopkins University, who completed his research while living and travelling in the NWFP, writes that the Frontier, which was the birthplace of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, has emerged more recently as the base of a ‘neo-Taliban’ insurgency, which has grown into a complex religio-political movement with three distinct but overlapping objectives. One is focused westwards on fuelling the Afghan conflict and overturning the Karzai government. A second is oriented globally towards providing a safe haven for Al Qaeda and its affiliates to plan attacks against Western interests. And a third is focused on carving out a sphere of influence within the ‘tribal’ agencies of the FATA for the establishment of Islamist rule, and on destabilising the Pakistani state so as to disrupt its co-operation with its US and Western allies.
Interaction:
White examines the interaction between Islamic politics and the state in the Frontier, and seeks to provide a framework for understanding the religious and political dynamics, which are critical to the development of any successful US strategy in the Frontier. He also analyses the five-year tenure of the MMA government in the NWFP, which represented the first extended attempt at actual governance by religious parties in Pakistan’s history. He goes on to look at the MMA’s decline and the rise of the neo-Taliban insurgency, as well as the return of Pashtun nationalist politics. White recommends policies by which the US might work with the government of Pakistan to implement programmes which deny insurgents a foothold in the settled areas of the Frontier; buttress the legitimacy of the state in dealing with religious and militant groups; increase the political utility and long-term sustainability of American development assistance; and address the ‘governance deficit’ in both the settled and Tribal Areas in such a way as to lay the groundwork for more robust state influence and counterinsurgency planning.
White argues that the religio-political dynamics in the Frontier are arguably more important than ever before. While Pakistan and the United States may increasingly resort to military action against Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other insurgent groups, military efforts alone will ultimately prove insufficient in producing a stable political order that satisfies the strategic objectives of either country. Ultimately, he maintains, counterinsurgency is about incentivising political endgames. In the Frontier, this requires a much more robust and comprehensive policy focus on local governance, politics, and even religion. Many US officials have come to adopt a jaundiced view of ‘political solutions’ in the Frontier – believing that they too often serve to empower religious parties, militants, or both. In this the US is often correct, but also complicit: American patronage has heavily privileged the Pakistani military, and done little to strengthen the kinds of civilian institutions that are necessary to provide a counterweight to both religious politics and insurgent mobilisation.
White believes that a focus on the settled areas of the Frontier is also long overdue. While the neo-Taliban insurgency remains heavily dependent upon bases deep in the FATA, the movement’s centre of gravity is gradually becoming more diffuse, blurring the distinction between settled and tribal regions. The NWFP has been rocked by a steep rise in militant activity over the last two years, and increasingly resembles the ‘ungoverned’ Tribal Areas. Political reforms in the FATA, on the other hand, are likely to make the Tribal Areas look more like the settled regions by introducing regular forms of political activity. This convergence makes the case for the development of counterinsurgency programmes, which operate across settled and tribal lines, and which deny political space to new ‘religious’ insurgent movements. White maintains that rather than serving as the vanguard of Taliban-like rule in the Frontier, the MMA instead became relatively pragmatic and found its Islamist agenda limited by both internal and external pressures. The lessons of the MMA’s transformation remain deeply relevant in the Frontier, White argues, even after its electoral defeat. Religious parties will continue to play a significant role in NWFP politics, particularly if and when the PML-N returns to power in Islamabad. The United States, which has generally avoided engagement with the religious parties, also has lessons to learn from the constructive role that the international community played in shaping the MMA’s Islamist experiment, he suggests.
White is of the view that religious parties are increasingly ambivalent about the goals of the neo-Taliban, and feel threatened both directly and indirectly by the movement’s expansion into areas which were traditionally dominated by ‘democratic Islamist’ groups. This realignment has not only reduced the influence of parties such as the JUI-F over the younger generation of madrassah graduates, but also created new common interests between the religious parties and the state in channelling discontent into the formal political process. Today observers often make the mistake of reading the neo-Taliban insurgency narrowly through the lens of Al Qaeda and the Waziri militant networks. In doing so they again tend to underestimate the ways in which these insurgent groups and their agendas are woven deeply into the fabric of both local and regional politics. American policymakers have been slow to recognise that the ‘failed’ peace deals in Swat in the spring of 2008 were in many ways effective, in that they demonstrated the government’s good faith and created political space for the state to undertake strong action when the militants reneged on their commitments. While some agreements with militants are clearly counterproductive, not all peace deals are created equal. Negotiations can contribute to a larger strategy of delegitimising Islamist insurgent activity.
According to White, the MMA’s defeat in the February 2008 elections sparked optimism that secular nationalism would replace religious politics in the Frontier. The Awami National Party (ANP) took advantage of public disillusionment with the Islamists’ governance and their inability to stem the rising tide of militancy. The nationalists’ victory, however, says more about cyclical politics and anti-incumbency sentiment than it does about political Islam. The ANP-PPP coalition government has in fact adopted a religious rhetoric of its own, and promulgated new shariah regulations in an attempt to undercut public support for Islamist insurgent groups. The rise of a new, militant Islamism in the Frontier is to be attributed to political, ideological, and demographic factors. But comparatively less attention has been paid to the internal and structural weaknesses of the state, which opened the door to insurgent influence.
Insurgency:
White is of the opinion that the spreading insurgency calls for a more integrated and creative agenda designed to bolster the state’s political legitimacy and improve its capacity to respond to new threats. This means crafting policies, which encourage local communities to side with the state and against Islamist insurgents. These policies must integrate political engagement, public diplomacy, security programming, and development assistance. American diplomats need to make greater efforts to engage with right-of-centre and religious parties. Regular, consistent interaction with parties such as the PML-N and JUI-F would, ironically, help to normalise and depoliticise the interaction, and allow the US to be better prepared for political realignments which may bring these parties back into power.

Home | National

Share this story!