Fazlullah has been chosen to lead the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), possibly because of his staunch anti-peace talks stance. After his election, the TTP spokesman categorically refused to hold talks, calling the government of Pakistan “a US puppet”. The backing of the Afghan Taliban — possibly of Mullah Omar — also played a role in his selection by the Taliban shura (council). It was reported earlier this month that a deadlock in selecting the TTP head was broken by Mullah Omar, considered ‘Ameerul Momineen’ by the TTP; he stepped in and named Fazlullah as the man for the job. Mullah Omar’s support for Fazlullah is not a surprise move as Swati militants fought alongside the Afghan Taliban in the first Afghan war and, later, as civil war raged in Afghanistan in the 1990s, they provided their Afghan counterparts recruits and eventually became their junior partners in Pakistan. They are the other side of the same coin.
Fazlullah’s rise has many implications. His rise in the ranks of the Taliban can have ominous consequences for Pakistan. Most importantly, by giving the mantle of the TTP’s leadership to Fazlullah, Taliban militants are projecting the image that the TTP is not FATA-centric and has support in the urban areas of Pakistan too. Perhaps it is flexing its muscles to expand its violent campaign to populous and economically prosperous Punjab to cause maximum casualties and inflict financial losses. The statement of the Taliban spokesperson that “We will target security forces, government installations, political leaders and police,” speaks volumes about this strategy. According to some observers, the TTP might enter into strategic alliances with militants in Punjab to carry out a spate of bombings and militant activities.
Maulana Fazlullah is against the negotiated settlement of the conflict, so he might begin a long war of attrition with the security forces of Pakistan. Nicholas Schmidle, a staff member of The New Yorker, writes in an article: The ambitions of the Pakistani Taliban’s new chief mean that the “Pakistani Taliban’s centre of power may well shift from Waziristan to the so-called settled areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, raising the prospect, once again, of pitched battles between the army and the militants.”
Arguably, the militants are calculating that the increase in militant activities might push democratically elected governments, both in the Centre and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, to either negotiate favourable terms for a peace agreement, if it is reached in the future, or cause maximum casualties of security personnel to dampen their morale in counter-terrorism operations and to cause war fatigue.
Finally, the backing of Mullah Omar shows a bigger game plan. As the US forces are withdrawing in 2014, the Afghan Taliban militants are forging stronger bonds with the TTP and sectarian outfits in Pakistan to have better bargaining chips for negotiation in Afghanistan. In this context, what should be the counter-terrorism strategy of the government of Pakistan? Rather than sounding apologetic about the killing of Hakeemullah Mehsud in a drone attack, the need of the hour is to formulate a counter-terrorism strategy that maximises both civilian and military resources. The focus should be on strengthening the capacity and morale of the law enforcement agencies that are going to face the major brunt of Taliban attacks, especially in the urban centres.
To face the Taliban onslaught, civilian law enforcement agencies need to be trained to fight urban insurgency, especially to save the lives of innocent civilians who can get caught in the crossfire. Instead of solely relying on the police force, which is not even properly equipped to carry out routine policing duties and is utterly unprepared to face better equipped and ideologically motivated Taliban fighters, a well-trained, better equipped, and politically neutral anti-terrorism task force must handle counter-terrorism operations in the urban areas. Fortunately, a small step has been taken in this regard: the Punjab government has set up an Anti-Terrorism Force (ATF) as a special wing of the Punjab police to fight militancy. However, this is a small force, consisting of only 500 policemen — it must be enlarged.
Our military intelligence and civilian intelligence agencies are poor at gathering actionable human intelligence. The farmhouse in South Waziristan where Hakeemullah Mehsud was killed in a drone strike was reportedly only one kilometre from an army check post. After the death of Hakeemullah, eyewitnesses reported that a convoy of jeeps, with black tinted glasses, went in and out of the farmhouse routinely. However, the whereabouts of the enemy number one of Pakistan were apparently not known to the intelligence agencies. As there are reports of rifts in the ranks of the TTP on the selection of Maulana Fazlullah, the intelligence agencies can exploit their differences to permeate the outfits and obtain actionable intelligence to know about their funding sources, targets and hideouts. However, to infiltrate militants and obtain human intelligence, the capacity of civilian agencies must be increased and their coordination improved with the military intelligence agencies.
Most important of all, a counter-terrorism strategy must be underpinned by the reality that the Swati Taliban, the Mehsuds of Waziristan, Asmatullah Muawiya of Punjab and the Afghan Taliban are interconnected in their objectives and goals: they want to carve out a territory in Pakistan and Afghanistan where they can practice their version of Islam. To guard against the ideological onslaught of the Taliban, who can misguide religiously inclined soldiers and policemen by issuing proclamations that security personnel are not fighting a just war against the militants, civilian law enforcement agencies as well as military forces must also be trained about the deceptive narrative of the Taliban who intend to seek power, resources and territory by retaining their monopoly over the interpretation of the Quran. They must also be taught why the war against Taliban militants is a legitimate war, essential for the existence of Pakistan.
(Concluded)
The writer is a research analyst based in Lahore