Another 36 people, mostly young men, fell prey to the ‘proxy versus proxy’ policy of the Pakistani government as a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest amid a funeral procession in Adezai (Matani) outskirts of Peshawar on November 9.
Located around 20 kilometres southeast of Peshawar, the area is used as a buffer between Peshawar and the semi-tribal region of Darra Adamkhel, once a flourishing (illegal) arms market, producing and supplying unlicensed weapons to all parts of Pakistan.The attack was the bloody revenge of the Taliban, as they did elsewhere in the past, against the people of Adezai for raising an army of volunteers (amn lashkar) to deny them (Taliban) safe havens in the area.
The lashkar elders say they lost 47 volunteers, including its founding leader Abdul Malik, who was killed in a suicide attack on November 8, 2009, since its formation in 2008. While the formation of lashkars to face a threat or act against someone under instructions from a jirga (jury of elders) is not something uncommon in the tribal system, the idea has been applied in the settled areas to ward off the rogue Taliban from targeting the cities.
Of course, this secured the cities or, in another sense, the security forces and their installations, but the civilians had to bear the brunt. And the Adezai bloodbath is the latest among the series of attacks carried out against lashkars in the tribal areas and cities over the past few years.
The first such attack was carried out when an anti-Taliban jirga was in progress in Orakzai tribal agency in October 2008. Over 80 people, a large number of them elders, were killed. There was a car bomb explosion in Shah Hassan Khel village of Lakki Marwat district on January 1, 2010. Then there was a suicide attack inside a mosque owned by an anti-Taliban elder in Darra Adamkhel in November 2010, followed by another such attack at a jirga in Mohmand tribal agency in December the same year. These are only a few instances of the Taliban brutalities and the government’s policy of disregard towards the safety and security of its peaceful citizens.
Be it Orakzai, Darra, Shah Hassan Khel, Mohmand or Adezai, all the lashkars of armed volunteers were raised under instructions and in some cases under pressure from the government, thus bringing the peaceful citizen in the front line against an enemy highly trained, well-equipped and ruthless.
Being considered a proxy of the Pakistani security establishment to pursue the country’s ‘strategic depth’ policy in Afghanistan and humble the much bigger and powerful adversary, India, on the Kashmir front, the Taliban or some of their splinter groups now seemed to be out of their control, thus posing a threat not only to their opponents but also to the Pakistani government and its security agencies. Attacks on the army’s General Headquarters (GHQ) and numerous blasts at army and police installations in different parts of the country are being seen as the handiwork of the same rogue elements, sometimes referred to as the ‘bad Taliban’.
In a desperate bid to neutralise the threat from the rogue Taliban, the security establishment of Pakistan rapidly promoted the formation of lashkars, thus not only bringing the common man in direct conflict with the militants, but also pushing society further towards militarisation. It is as if the government’s security agencies are trying to neutralise their old proxy, the Taliban, with a new one by raising lashkars of armed volunteers on the level of towns and villages.
While the full repercussions of this policy are yet to be felt, one immediate aspect is that a common Pakistani is now a direct victim of the conflict. As lashkar volunteers in almost all parts of the tribal areas and the Pashtun belt have serious complaints against the government for withdrawing support after pushing them into a fight with the Taliban, their frustration, if unaddressed, could soon force them to turn their guns against the government or at least the unarmed people living in their neighbourhood.
And why not when a similar situation led to the civil war in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from the country in the late 1980s? Armed to the teeth and supported by well-trained private militias, the warlords turned their guns against each other to control major strategic cities in war-battered Afghanistan.
Looking at the strength of the Pakistani security forces and their command and control system, one cannot predict a similar situation in the country. However, eruption of trouble on a smaller scale could not be ruled out if the policy of ‘proxy versus proxy’ continues for a longer period.
The writer can be reached at [email protected]