April 13, 2007
Pakistan's Militant Drift
by Staff Writer
The Economist
In Pakistan, more alarmingly even than usual, the flag of jihad is fluttering and extremists are marching on the state. Of several concurrent--partly co-ordinated--dramas involving Islamist militants, the bloodiest is in South Waziristan, a semi-autonomous tribal region on Pakistan's north-western frontier. In three weeks of high-altitude battle there between local Taliban and foreign--mostly Uzbek--Islamists, more than 250 foreigners are reported to have been killed. The army, which has failed to clear the foreigners from South Waziristan in four years of trying, announced on April 9th that the Talibs had done so. Yet quite why this fight began, whether it has ended, and what it means for Pakistan and the broader "war on terror" all remain unclear.
A less obscure struggle was launched in Islamabad on April 6th by a mullah named Abdul Aziz. He gave the government a month to close the capital's brothels and music shops, and tear down advertisements depicting women. He also declared sharia law within the high walls of his mosque and the adjoining madrassa. If the government were to respond with force, he promised it suicide-bombings. After hearing this sermon, Mr Aziz's followers, allegedly more than 10,000 bearded males and burqa-clad females, set fire in the street to a pyre of music videos and CDs extracted from local traders. The mosque, Lal Masjid, on the roof of which these young zealots can be seen practising martial moves with staves, is barely a mile from Pakistan's supreme court, parliament building and the headquarters of the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI).
For much of Pakistan's history, the ISI, the army's main spying outfit, has mobilised Islamists to fight its wars, in Afghanistan, Kashmir and elsewhere. This was consistent with a broader policy, pursued by successive--especially military--governments, of pandering to Islamists. Because it had made common cause with the fanatics, the army thought it could control them. If this were ever true, it is not now.
On March 29th a suicide-bomber killed one soldier and mutilated several others in an army compound in Kharian, 160km (100 miles) south-east of Islamabad. Two days earlier, five ISI officers were killed in a grenade attack in Bajaur, another of the seven tribal agencies (see map). The suicide blast was the eighth this year, including two in Islamabad, and all, says a senior intelligence official, were linked to militants in Waziristan.
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