Pakistan's lost frontier

Jinnah's moth-eaten dream is shattering along Indus

Nearly half a dozen of my cousins who are officers in the Army have quit in the last year", revealed a Pashtun journalist friend. According to another Pashtun journalist, who has been reporting the Islamist insurgency from ground-zero, there have been many desertions from the paramilitary forces (the Frontier Corp and Tribal Levies). He spoke about a friend of his who quit the tribal levies because he was warned by his father that if he died fighting the Taliban, let alone getting a burial, even his body will not be permitted to enter the village.

Already people in Islamabad and Lahore are talking about an exodus of people from the areas affected by conflict. Tribal maliks and khans, businessmen and local Government officials like district nazim and councilors are moving to Peshawar, and in many cases settling their families in the cities of Punjab.

But uncertainty about the future is also affecting those who are already living in cities of Punjab. A senior Pashtun bureaucrat called a journalist friend and wondered what the future holds for Pashtuns, especially those who are well integrated in Pakistani (read Punjabi) power structure. The journalist, who is himself a Pashtun, later said that people like him who have great associations and friendships in Punjab and have never felt alien in Punjab will be worst affected if the conflict between the Pashtun Islamists and the Pakistani state worsens. He feared that if and when the sentiment in Punjab turns hostile to Pashtuns, people like him will be rejected (if not ejected) by Punjab and will be misfits among fellow Pashtuns.

And it won't take much for the Punjabis to turn hostile towards the Pashtuns. Journalist Imtiaz Alam thinks that a couple of suicide attacks in Lahore will have Punjab baying for blood. For the moment, however, unlike Islamabad, where the fear of terrorist strikes by Pashtun jihadis and suicide bombers is palpable, in Lahore the war being waged in trans-Indus Pakistan is still somewhat distant. This is so partly because until now, the jihadis and Taliban have only targeted the security forces. Civilian casualties in suicide bombings can by and large be classified as 'collateral damage'. But the pattern of attacks could change as the fighting in NWFP and the tribal areas worsens and the military offensive causes heavy collateral damage in both life and property among Pashtuns.

Not surprisingly, many Punjabis are now openly voicing the fear if the deteriorating situation in the Pashtun belt (NWFP and the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan) is not arrested and reversed fast, the frontier would be lost. And if the frontier is lost, then Baluchistan, too, would break away from Pakistan.

Popular Urdu columnist Nazir Naji, who has received death threats from the Islamist groups for writing against them, doesn't mince his words in saying that Pakistan is heading for failure. Like many others in Lahore and Islamabad, he invokes the Col Ralph Peters thesis about Pakistan splitting vertically along the Indus.

The only saving grace about the situation that Pakistan confronts in the Pashtun belt is that both the state and society has got out of the denial mode and is recognising that the problem posed by the forces of jihad is far worse than they ever imagined. The setbacks received by the military have ended the cocky confidence that a crack of the whip or a shot of cannon will be enough to restore order in the turbulent Pashtun belt. The state machinery, so effective against unarmed and peaceful protestors like the lawyers, journalists and political workers, has crumbled in the face of battle-hardened and committed to their cause Taliban.

Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao has admitted that the traditional instruments through which the state established its writ -- tribal jirgas and lashkars, using the influence of powerful maliks, khans and sardars -- no longer work. The social structures have been turned on their head by the militant-mullah compact. He blames two things for this state of affairs: First, the office of the political agent was devalued by the administrative reforms ushered in by Mr Pervez Musharraf's local body system; second, and more damaging was the inaction of the MMA Government in NWFP in taking timely and effective counter measures against the jihadis. For instance, he says, the MMA Government avoided using the Army against the jihadis in Swat even though the troops were on the standby.

Mr Sherpao said that the federal Government could not order Army action without the concurrence of the provincial Government because, not only would it then have been accused of violating the principles of federation, but the MMA would have also exploited the situation politically by inciting the people against the federal Government, as indeed it did after Army action was ordered in Swat.

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