Many people in Pakistan and outside the country believe that the Taliban are a worse enemy that any other internal or external adversary that we have ever faced
We are not sure if the Pakistani Taliban and their brand of justice and political violence ever had grassroots public support. There is only one objective measurement of public support, and that is the percentage of the popular votes a party or group wins at the elections. The Taliban and their public defenders, their numbers on a constant decline, don’t have trust in the common man or seek power through popular legitimacy. Their route to power is through tribal-type conquest and absolute subjugation of the people.
But then the Taliban are a very kind of people: they don’t accept democracy, the constitution, fundamental human rights, equality among citizens or the sovereignty of parliament. Nor do they represent Islam, as it is understood and interpreted by great classical or modern day Muslim scholars and jurists.
The Taliban, those who have taken up arms against the people, society and state of Pakistan, have neither learnt the ethical, philosophical and cultural content of Islam nor have they any respect for religious pluralism within the broader understanding of Islam as is practiced by different streams of religious thought in different countries.
How did they emerge as a religious and militant force?
The political and ideological roots of the Pakistani Taliban are in the Taliban movement of Afghanistan and its successful overthrow of the fragmented Mujahideen government. Two other factors need to be mentioned regarding their rise. First is the Pashtun ethnicity and the philosophy of tribal jihadism to redress wrong, seek justice, punish wrong doers, and realistically establish their control and political domination.
The second is our alliance with the Taliban as a formidable demographic and military force against other ethnic groups in Afghanistan, which were supported by our rival regional powers — Iran, India and Russia. Many political leaders in Pakistan and in other countries thought that the Taliban were a good force as long as they could end violence and warlordism, establish peace and security and de-weaponise Afghan society.
Since the Mujahideen war against the Soviet Union, private Pakistani religious groups along with our government and Western powers became deeply involved in Afghanistan. It was a strange mix of powers with different post-Soviet outlooks for the region, rooted in different ideological traditions but with an immediate common goal: defeat of the Soviet Union and the Afghan communists.
Our Taliban tradition — armed struggle by mainly religious groups to establish an Islamic regime — is based on history, factional beliefs and political ethos linked to the Afghan Taliban.
The closet Taliban in the media, the religious and political parties, and some political commentators created a benign myth about the Taliban as an Islamic force willing to sacrifice anything to defeat western imperialism and its surrogate elites in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A wide array of other Muslim groups from the Middle East have similar agendas and have trans-national linkages through Al Qaeda and other organisations to fund and promote this mindset.
The Taliban mindset further flourished during the Musharraf regime with what was virtually the political front of the militant Taliban running governments in two critical provinces — Balochistan and the NWFP, both bordering Afghanistan, where a Taliban insurgency was underway. It was really during the tenure of General Musharraf that the Pakistani Taliban in Swat, Malakand and FATA became organised and started taking control of territory through the use of violence.
The anti-American sentiment in the context of Afghanistan was carefully cultivated by Taliban sympathisers in Pakistan, which further nurtured the image of the Taliban as an ‘anti-imperialist force’ and some kind of liberators. Some leaders, mostly from the religious parties, justified crossing of the Pak-Afghan border by the Pakistani Taliban much like the Mujahideen that fought against the former Soviet Union.
The supporters of the Taliban, now silenced by the majority view, still don’t see them as a threat to society and the state. It doesn’t really matter to these Taliban supporters if people are humiliated, whipped or slaughtered publicly and on camera.
But finally, the people of Pakistan, the silent majority, have woken up to the threat that the Taliban and their supporters in different political formations pose to society and, in a broader context, to the image of Muslims and Islamic civilisation. The Taliban actually further the same caricatured view of Islam and Muslims societies as intolerant, primitive and hostile to modernity and human liberty as the one held by some orientalists.
Pakistan’s standing as an Islamic society suffered a great deal during the Musharraf regime as it was caught between the Taliban and him with no respect for the constitution, the people’s mandate or democratic principles.
As the fake democracy and political manipulations of the Musharraf regime and his political associates and their corruption have become exposed, so has the brutality and violent face of the Taliban. As the Taliban ordered suicide bombing of civilians, killed security personnel, targeted locally influentials and engaged in criminal activities to sustain their war against the Pakistani state and society, the people of Pakistan realised who the real enemy was.
The people in Swat and FATA have been held hostage and have suffered the cruelty and totalitarianism of the Taliban for too long. Neither successive Pakistani governments nor the rest of society came to their rescue, while the Taliban’s supporters continued to praise them as patriotic, just and selfless warriors.
A big shift in the image of the Taliban and their supporters has occurred, not accidentally but after a careful analysis of what Pakistan and its society would become if the Taliban and other religious zealots were allowed to capture power. Life in Pakistan under the Taliban or forces like them would fare no better than the Hobbesian state of nature — brutish, nasty and short.
We believe the support for the Taliban was exaggerated and their image hyped up unrealistically. Actually, those praising the Taliban should have migrated to live under their brutal rule with the daily drill of public executions, mass murders and dehumanisation of women.
The strong sentiment against the Taliban that has emerged is comparable to the patriotic sentiment during our wars with India. Many people in Pakistan and outside the country believe that the Taliban are a worse enemy that any other internal or external adversary that we have ever faced.
This realisation, though late in the day, is going to help the security forces and the nation marginalise and effectively counter the Taliban threat. Pakistan has already secured a big victory against the Taliban by creating a national consensus against them. The Taliban and their supporters that scared us for so long have suffered a big blow and may not able to socially and politically recover. But this also offers us a respite and opportunity to address the domestic and foreign policy issues that created the Taliban monster in the first place.
Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk
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