To a larger extent, the latest episode of militancy in FATA is an extension of the Afghan crisis. Geography, ethnicity and Islamabad’s deep involvement in Afghanistan account for the spillover of the Afghan crisis into Pakistan’s tribal areas. For Islamabad, engaging with the Afghan government appears to be the only sure way to minimise the lethal effects of any future Afghan crisis. Islamabad’s actions abroad should not be seen as exceeding the widely accepted norms of international behaviour.
The spillover effect of a conflict entails its spread from one place to another. Geographical contiguity plays a crucial role. Secondly, the linkage is to be more than only geographical. The communities straddling the contiguous areas are linked to each other either through kinship or ideology, or both, or some other connections. The Afghan crisis has a spillover effect in FATA for three reasons. Geography is one. Pakistan shares a 2,500 km border with Afghanistan. Pashtuns, who also happen to be Muslims, straddle the border regions from across both sides of the Durand Line. Thirdly, Islamabad’s deeper involvement in Afghanistan is instrumental when it comes to the domino effect of the Afghan conflict.
Although I fundamentally believe that violence in FATA needs to be seen in its historical perspective, at least since the colonial period, the latest episode of violence emanating from the region owes much to the ripple effects of the wider Afghan crisis. The crisis was triggered firstly in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and later in the wake of the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) post-9/11. Thus the roots of the prevailing maelstrom can be traced back to the era of the anti-Soviet resistance. With US support, Pakistan, under Zia, was well disposed to patronise the Afghan resistance. The seven mujahideen resistance parties were all based in Peshawar. The mujahideen secreted their arms and ammunition in the tribal areas. They would use the region as a launch pad while attacking the Soviets and Afghan soldiers, and then retreat to safety. In response, the Afghan jets would bombard various targets inside the Pakistani tribal areas. Encouraged by the mujahideen leaders in order to finance the war effort, the tribesmen started farming the highly lucrative poppy crop. Khyber alone housed 200 heroin refineries. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan gave a strong fillip to the ammunition industry in the tribal belt. Darra Adamkhel bazaar became a transaction point for the sale and purchase of Russian, US and Chinese arms.
Al Qaeda and the Taliban come from the Afghan resistance movement. Al Qaeda was the new incarnation of its predecessor the Afghan Service Bureau (Maktab al Khidamat). Established in 1984 by Osama bin Laden and Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, the Peshawar-based MAK recruited young Muslims and had offices in New York and other cities in the US and Western Europe. Under US patronage, Pakistan reportedly trained 85,000 fighters to dislodge the Soviets from Afghanistan. With the withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan, MAK was transformed into al Qaeda. Formed in 1989, al Qaeda was meant for assisting suppressed Muslims against their oppressors both in the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds. Similarly, some of the would-be Taliban leaders, ranging from Mullah Omar and Mullah Hassan Rehmani to Mullah Abbas, actually fought the Soviets and the Afghan communist regime before fighting the warlords and overrunning Afghanistan as the Taliban. During the Taliban’s bid to wrest Afghanistan from the warlords, men from Pakistan’s tribal areas would replenish the militia’s ranks.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan caused the first major influx of Afghans to neighbouring Pakistan. Another exodus of Afghans took place in 1985 when the fighting was intense. A third wave of Afghan refugees arrived in Pakistan after the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan and the simultaneous mujahideen drive against the Soviet-installed Afghan government. This was mainly an urban-based exodus of mixed ethnicities. The number of non-Pashtun Afghan refugees rose, especially in the late 1990s when the Taliban were overrunning large swathes of the country, including the non-Pashtun north. At one time, Afghans in Pakistan crossed the three million mark.
Launched on October 7, 2001, OEF had the expressed objectives of ousting the Taliban regime, neutralising al Qaeda and arresting bin Laden. The war came to Pakistan once the Taliban regime collapsed. Bin Laden and the Yemeni al Zawahiri were supposedly among the 2,000 al Qaeda fighters who, while escaping the US bombardment of the Tora Bora caves, ended up in Pakistan’s tribal areas. As the US-led invasion of Afghanistan drove the Taliban and their associates out of Afghanistan, hordes of potential militants sought refuge in the tribal areas. The International Crisis Group report claimed that since December 2001 to March 2002, some 500 to 600 fighters (mostly Arabs, Uzbeks and Chechens) moved to FATA. Quoting US military officials, the acclaimed Pakistani writer Ahmed Rashid claimed that by June 2002, up to 3,500 foreign militants were holed up in South Waziristan. Some estimates suggested that some 8,000 foreign fighters swarmed the tribal belt. Obviously, all this could not have happened so easily without some official connivance.
The Musharraf government had a lackadaisical approach when the retreating militants chose hideouts in FATA. As in the past, the Taliban were to be Pakistan’s “strategic assets” in the future. Nevertheless, when it came to al Qaeda and its linked groups, the country delivered on the front. By the end of 2003, Islamabad had handed over 500 people to the US with alleged links to al Qaeda. Scepticism loomed large when it came to Pakistan’s dealing with the Taliban however. But even here Pakistan did not spare the opportunity to get rid of those Taliban that posed security threats to the country. Since 2004, military operations have spared no tribal agency in the northwest.
Given its geographical contiguity and ethnic-tribal links with Afghanistan, Pakistan may not completely insulate itself from the adverse effects of any Afghan crisis. Islamabad’s direct dealing with a de jure Afghan government can mitigate the deadly effects of any Afghan crisis. Dealing through proxies has only backfired.
The writer is a freelance journalist stationed in Quetta