Taliban announce a 10-day ceasefire in Swat Valley
Updated
South Asia is also a region of priority for the new Obama administration.
US special envoy Richard Holbrooke is in India, as he concludes a regional tour which took in Afghanistan and Pakistan where Taliban fighters in the troubled Swat valley have announced a 10-day ceasefire. Pakistani security forces have been battling Taliban militants in the Swat region since late 2007.
Now, the Taliban has set up their own interpretation of Islamic Syaria law. Rights activists say the Taliban's Syariah code suppresses women and denies girls a school education.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speakers: Sajjan Gohel, director of international security at the Asia Pacific Foundation in London
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GOHEL: Unfortunately, this is now one of many deals that the Central Government have established with tribal elements, extremists and of course the Taliban itself. In fact there was a previous peace deal in Swat, that was signed last spring, that was in fact a spectacular failure. It allowed the militants to tighten their hold and take revenge on individuals that had supported local government officials in the past. In effect, this now legitimises the Syariah rule and the Taliban rule, that has already existed in the Swat for well over a year. I think that's a very worrying precedent and perhaps a very stark reality for the Obama administration that has highlighted Pakistan as a very important strategic country.
LAM: And I understand that the Taliban is not in itself an elected administration in the Swat Valley?
GOHEL: Well, the Taliban has evolved into a number of different groups. You have the Afghan Taliban that are carrying out attacks in Afghanistan, but you also have the Pakistan Taliban of which there are many outfits. The particular group that is ruling the Swat Valley by force is the Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law or TNSM. That's led by Maulana Fazul, who is also known as Mullah Radio for the illegal radio channel he operates, in which every resident in the Swat Valley is forced to listen to. Now they basically rmed a parallel government in which they have tried to impose very strict Syariah law. An example involves banning girls from attending school. They have closed over 170 in the Swat Valley and I think this draws a very eiry parallel to the policy of the Taliban in Afghanistan that we saw pre 9/11.
LAM: Indeed, and the Swat Valley itself, I understand used to be a picture of moderation and in fact it was a very popular tourism destination. How did the Swat Valley fall into the Taliban's clutches?
GOHEL: Well, the Swat Valley as you mentioned, was a very popular tourist destination. In fact it had the only ski resort in the whole of Pakistan. This is basically the legacy of the previous president of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, who had allowed the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan to grow following September 11th. He didn't do enough to dismantle it. In fact he turned a blind eye to those activities. A number of very weak peace deals were signed with tribal groups in the federal-administered tribal areas, such as the North Waziristan Accord that was signed a couple of years ago. Musharraf hailed that as a landmark deal. It was a total disaster. It gave the radical groups and the Taliban the ability to replenish their ranks. That then spread eastwards into the Northwest Frontier Province, which places like the Swat Valley and Malakand, were then also targetted. You have seen the proliferation of the Taliban.
I think what's disturbing is that you have 20,000 Pakistani troops in the Swat Valley, but they are not actually doing anything. They are just monitoring the situation and I think again this illustrates the fact that Pakistan's military is often behind the biggest problems that we see in Pakistan.
LAM: So is the military unwilling or unable to rein in the Taliban, and to what extent is that a reflection of the fractures within Pakistani politics, within the administration in Islamabad?
GOHEL: There already seems to be fractures within the civilian government, particularly between the President Zardari and his Prime Minister, Raza Yousuf Gilani, they have disagreed over policy in terms of how to deal with the extremists, and also their relations with their neighbours on either side, India and Afghanistan itself. And in relation to the military, this has always been the biggest problem, because Pakistan's ruled the country in a very tight-fisted way. In fact there has been more military rule than civilian rule and the military is not prepared to give up what they describe as their strategic assets, like the Taliban in the short term. And this is that short term logic that is going to create long term problems for Pakistan. Because the problem of the Taliban has proliferated. It's no longer confined in the tribal regional areas, it's going into major parts of the country that are open to all kinds of worrying dimensions for the future.
