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| Taliban exploit class rifts to gain ground in Pakistan: NYT |
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Saturday, April 18, 2009
PESHAWAR: The Taliban have advanced deeper into Pakistan by engineering a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants, according to government officials and analysts here.
The strategy cleared a path to power for the Taliban in the Swat Valley, where the government allowed Islamic law to be imposed this week, and it carries broad dangers for the rest of Pakistan, particularly the militantsí main goal, the populous heartland of the Punjab.
In Swat, accounts from those who have fled now make clear that the Taliban seized control by pushing out about four dozen landlords who held the most power. To do so, the militants organised peasants into armed gangs that became their shock troops, the residents, government officials and analysts said.
The approach allowed the Taliban to offer economic spoils to people frustrated with lax and corrupt government even as the militants imposed a strict form of Islam through terror and intimidation.
ìThis was a bloody revolution in Swat,î said a senior Pakistani official who oversees Swat, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the Taliban. ìI wouldnít be surprised if it sweeps the established order of Pakistan.î
The Talibanís ability to exploit class divisions adds a new dimension to the insurgency and is raising alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which remains largely feudal. Analysts and other government officials warn that the strategy executed in Swat is easily transferable to the Punjab, saying that the province, where militant groups are already showing strength, is ripe for the same social upheavals that have convulsed Swat and the tribal areas.
Mahboob Mahmood, a Pakistani-American lawyer and former classmate of President Obama’s, said, ìThe people of Pakistan are psychologically ready for a revolution.î ìThe militants, for their part, are promising more than just proscriptions on music and schooling,î he said. ìThey are also promising Islamic justice, effective government and economic redistribution.î
The Taliban strategy in Swat, an area of 1.3 million people with fertile orchards, vast plots of timber and valuable emerald mines, unfolded in stages over five years, analysts said. The momentum of the insurgency built in the past two years, when the Taliban, reinforced by seasoned fighters from the tribal areas with links to Al Qaeda, fought the Pakistani Army to a standstill, said a Pakistani intelligence agent who works in the Swat region.
The insurgents struck at any competing point of power: landlords and elected leaders ó who were usually the same people ó and an underpaid and unmotivated police force, said Khadim Hussain, a linguistics and communications professor at Bahria University in Islamabad.
At the same time, the Taliban exploited the resentments of the landless tenants, particularly the fact that they had many unresolved cases against their bosses in a slow-moving and corrupt justice system, Hussain and residents who fled the area said.
Their grievances were stoked by a young militant, Maulana Fazlullah, who set up an FM radio station in 2004 to appeal to the disenfranchised. The broadcasts featured easy-to-understand examples using goats, cows, milk and grass. By 2006, Fazlullah had formed a ragtag force of landless peasants armed by the Taliban, said Hussain and former residents of Swat.
At first, the pressure on the landlords was subtle. One landowner was pressed to take his son out of an English-speaking school offensive to the Taliban. Others were forced to make donations to the Taliban.
Then, in late 2007, Shujaat Ali Khan, the richest of the landowners, his brothers and his son, Jamal Nasir, the mayor of Swat, became targets. After Shujaat Ali Khan, a senior politician in the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, narrowly missed being killed by a roadside bomb, he fled to London. A brother, Fateh Ali Mohammed, a former senator, left, too, and now lives in Islamabad. Nasir also fled.
Later, the Taliban published a ìmost wantedî list of 43 prominent names, said Muhammad Sher Khan, a landlord who is a politician with the Pakistan People’s Party, and whose name was on the list. All those named were ordered to present themselves to the Taliban courts or risk being killed, he said. “When you know that they will hang and kill you, how will you dare go back there?” Khan, hiding in the Punjab, said in a telephone interview. “Being on the list meant “Don’t come back to Swat.”
One of the main enforcers of the new order was Ibn-e-Amin, a Taliban commander from the same area as the landowners, called Matta. The fact that Amin came from Matta, and knew who was who there, put even more pressure on the landowners, Hussain said.
According to news reports, Amin was arrested in August 2004 on suspicion of having links to Al Qaeda and was released in November 2006. Another Pakistani intelligence agent said Amin often visited a madrasa in North Waziristan, the stronghold of Al Qaeda in the tribal areas, where he apparently received guidance.
Each time the landlords fled, their tenants were rewarded. They were encouraged to cut down the orchard trees and sell the wood for their own profit, the former residents said. Or they were told to pay the rent to the Taliban instead of their now absentee bosses.
Two dormant emerald mines have reopened under Taliban control. The militants have announced that they will receive one-third of the revenues. Since the Taliban fought the military to a truce in Swat in February, the militants have deepened their approach and made clear who is in charge.
When provincial bureaucrats visit Mingora, they must now follow the Talibanís orders and sit on the floor, surrounded by Taliban bearing weapons, and in some cases wearing suicide bomber vests, the senior provincial official said.
In many areas of Swat, the Taliban have demanded that each family give up one son for training as a Taliban fighter, said Mohammad Amad, executive director of a non-governmental group, the Initiative for Development and Empowerment Axis.
A landlord who fled with his family last year said he received a chilling message last week. His tenants called him in Peshawar to tell him his huge house was being demolished, he said in an interview here.
The most crushing news was about his finances. He had sold his fruit crop in advance, though at a quarter of last yearís price. But even that smaller yield would not be his, his tenants said, relaying the Taliban message. The buyer had been ordered to give the money to the Taliban instead.
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