The Nawaz Sharif government — perhaps because of its history of emerging from the womb of the army — appears to be eliminating the ‘bad Taliban’ much more covertly than its predecessors.
Behind the angry posturing of PML-N Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and a coterie of politicians publicly denouncing the US for sending a drone through peace talks, the US and Pakistan appear to be coordinating against the Taliban who threaten western interests and attack inside Pakistan. Still, the credibility of politicians like Sartaj Aziz goes on the line when their pledge to halt drone attacks is followed by a missile strike the next day.
The discrepancy between what Pakistan says and does came to light last month when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited Washington. As Sharif denounced drone attacks in his meeting with President Obama on October 23, 2013, and victims of the attacks testified on the Hill, US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee member Alan Grayson told the media, “With all due respect to an ally, it is well within Pakistan’s capability to end those drone strikes tomorrow.” The congressman went on to tell the media that the Pakistan Air Force is “very powerful”, and has the capability of controlling its own air space.
Mark Mazetti, author of Way of the Knife, writes that Pakistan asked the US to launch its first predator drone strike to eliminate tribal leader Nek Mohammed in 2004, after he led a rebellion against the state. Afterwards, Pakistan claimed it had fired the missile that killed the tribal leader it had once patronised. Like his predecessors, Nek Mohammed and Baitullah Mehsud, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) commander, Hakeemullah Mehsud, killed in a drone strike on November 1, 2013, had apparently grown too big for his boots. The US offered five million dollars for his capture after Hakeemullah coordinated with a Jordanian agent in December 2009 and wiped out a sizeable staff of CIA employees stationed in Khost, Afghanistan. Pakistan put Rs 50 million head money on the TTP commander for his lethal attacks against the state and citizens.
Only a select cadre in the Pakistani government was apparently on board about the plans to take out Hakeemullah. The PML-N government had taken JUI-F Chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman into confidence about arranging a ‘peace meeting’ with the Taliban in North Waziristan. Still, while talks with militants were publicised, the drone strikes were kept well under the radar.
Consequently, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit to Washington, followed by his announcement from London on October 31, 2013 that “peace talks with the Taliban have begun”, were met by puzzled silence in Pakistan. TTP spokesman Shahidullah Shahid told journalists the same day that they were unaware of any talks. Parliamentary leaders publicly complained that they had been kept in the dark.
In North Waziristan, months of friendly communiqués between the government apparently put militants at ease. The administration’s imposition of curfew added to the impression that it was for upcoming TTP-government talks. On November 1, the Taliban gathered in a mosque near Hakeemullah’s sprawling farmhouse — bought by his cousin, Latifullah Mehsud — for a meeting on whether to talk to the government or not.
The US apparently set the ball rolling shortly after NATO troops snatched Latifullah in early October from the custody of Afghan intelligence officials, and interrogated him at Bagram base. Latifullah was a key link between the Taliban groups that function on both sides of the border. The Karzai government had planned to use him as an interlocutor in ‘peace talks’ with the Taliban, despite the TTP’s known role of attacking state institutions inside Pakistan. These increased cross-border attacks have, in recent months, caused Pakistan’s Foreign Office to complain that Afghanistan is being used as a safe haven for TTP militants.
For two days, US drones fired missiles into North Waziristan searching for their target. The second attack on November 1 was successful. Hakeemullah and his two companions were killed outside his $ 120,000 farmhouse. Neighbours reported surprise at seeing the Taliban commander before his vehicle was struck. Hakeemullah was understandably a rarity here, being on the run from drone attacks that occur mostly in this Pak-Afghan border area. With the assassination of the TTP chief, and his replacement by Mullah Fazlullah, an enraged TTP has pledged attacks on the military and senior government officials in Punjab for being a ‘slave’ of the US.
However, Islamabad says it will continue to pursue peace talks with the Taliban. In so doing, it has found PTI chief Imran Khan’s reactions especially useful to soak up the anger. Khan’s visible shock at Hakeemullah’s assassination and angry talk by the PTI and religious parties of stopping NATO convoys to Afghanistan, have served to deflect attention and let off steam. This is the same strategy that General Musharraf used after 9/11 when public anger at the US invasion of Afghanistan helped propel the coalition of Islamic parties in the border areas. Then, too, the US was allowed to become the favourite whipping boy of the masses.
However, as the US prepares for withdrawal of its troops, and nations compete for a foothold in Afghanistan, Islamabad faces an uncertain future. Different intelligence agencies have gotten behind the Taliban as they fight the US, Afghanistan and Pakistan, while cementing tribal bonds across the Durand Line. The gunning down of Afghan Taliban financier Naseerullah Haqqani in Islamabad is the latest example of warring intelligence agencies. It also shows a falling out among multiple Taliban groups, once loosely commandeered by Hakeemullah Mehsud.
The drone attack in a madrassa in Hangu on November 21, 2013, which killed leading members of the Haqqani group, appears to have also hit at the Afghan militants plotting in a settled area of Pakistan. As a dozen years of war have revealed, the younger generation of Taliban is angrier and less controllable than the militants trained by Pakistan in the 1990s to take over Afghanistan. Indeed, there is a shortage of ‘good Taliban’ like Mullah Omar, Mullah Baradar and the Haqqani network taking refuge in Pakistan, who merely attack NATO troops in Afghanistan and do not attack state interests within Pakistan.
How Pakistan gets rid of its bad Taliban, while deflecting anger away from it, and simultaneously gains a foothold in Afghanistan, will be a high wire act worth watching.
Nafisa Hoodbhoy is a broadcast journalist in Washington DC and author of the book, Aboard the Democracy Train: A Journey through Pakistan’s Last Decade of Democracy