Al-Qaeda did not give up. When the funeral prayers for the Lal
Masjid students and clerics were being conducted, Al-Qaeda was in
communication with its man from the scenic Swat valley. The valley
was now in hands of the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-Shariat-e-Mohammadi’s
Mullah Fazlullah. Fazlullah was the son-in-law of Maulana Sufi
Mohammad, the cleric arrested by Pakistan’s security agencies for
illegally having taken thousand of youths to Afghanistan to fight
against the US invasion in 2001.
The little-known Mufti Aftab was then sent by Al-Qaeda from
Miranshah, North Waziristan to guide the Al-Qaeda man in Swat
on how to pursue the pattern and style of the future struggle.
However, the story goes that the purpose of the movement in Swat
following the Lal Masjid massacre was not the establishment of
Islamic courts, as projected, nor was Mullah Fazlullah Al-Qaeda’s
real leader there. The real Al-Qaeda leader was Bin Yameen. People
who had spent time with Bin Yameen (also referred as Ibn-e-Ameen)
during his detention in ISI cells or had worked under his command
in Swat, or who had known him from early childhood, agreed on
two things about him: his short temper, which stretched to the limits
of madness, and his strikingly good looks. Bin Yameen was 6 feet
2 inches tall, had a broad chest, was fair in complexion, and had a full head of hair. His looks were God’s gift, but his short temper
was not inbuilt.
Circumstances were responsible for making an extremely polite
young man into an ideological fanatic. Mufti Aftab used to document
reports on Bin Yameen and send them back to Al-Qaeda ideologues,
and they were convinced that in coming years Bin Yameen would be
the man in Swat to create the maximum friction between the state
authorities and the general public. He was expected to take the
confrontation to the level where the Pakistan Army would not be
able to provide support to the US war in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda’s
instructions and Bin Yameen’s fanaticism worked well together,
and turned the movement for enforcing Islamic laws in Swat into a
revolt against the state.
I am not sure whether I should call it his fate that he was born in
Peochar Valley of Swat, the hub of militancy. Legend has it that in
the early nineteenth century the area was the headquarters of Syed
Ahmad Brelvi, the pioneer of the nineteenth-century Jihad in South
Asia against the Sikh dynasty in Punjab and the northern parts of
the present Pakistan. Bin Yameen came from Wanai Namal village,
in Matta in the Peochar valley. Born as a Behloolzai, a subtribe
of the Youzufzai tribe, Bin Yameen was never the playboy of his
village or a poet. He was a school dropout at the matric (high-
school certificate) level. While he was still in his teens he went to
Afghanistan and fought alongside the Taliban against the Northern
Alliance forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud. He was arrested in his
first battle and then spent seven long years in the inhuman jails of
the Northern Alliance. Bin Yameen often remembers how his fellow
Taliban detainees died in the jail. Sometimes he witnessed their swift
deaths while they were talking or cooking. After the Taliban defeat,
he was released by the United States.
But it was not his seven years in the Northern Alliance jails
that had embittered him. After his release from Pansheri prison,
his manners were still extraordinarily polite. He always stood up
to welcome any guest. The marriage and love life of any Pashtun
has always been a very private business. No Pashtun from a village
background would ever confide in anyone over matters of the
heart. But Bin Yameen used to proudly say that his wife (also his
relative) had fallen in love with him and that before their marriage,
when they were only engaged during his prolonged imprisonment
in Afghanistan, all the family members had pressed her to break
her engagement to him and marry somebody else. But against all
Pashtun traditions, the girl defied her family and said that her name
would be tied to Bin Yameen’s forever, whether he lived or died.
When Bin Yameen was released and went back to his village the first
thing he did was to marry her, proud that this was the girl who had
steadfastly stood by him despite all the pressures put on her by her
family to forget him.
Bin Yameen always said that all the pain and agony of his days
in the Afghan prison disappeared after the marriage. It was as if
nothing had happened. He started his new life with a loving wife.
His wife delivered a son and they moved to Peshawar. Bin Yameen
joined Jaish-e-Mohammad, the militant group later banned by
Musharraf’s regime. Since he was the most knowledgeable person on
the Afghan prison system among them – and there were hundreds of
Pakistani prisoners languishing in Afghan jails following the defeat
of Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 – he was placed in charge of
Jaish’s jail affairs. His responsibility was to look after the interests
of those who were in Afghan jails and work for their release.
December 2003, when Musharraf was the target of two failed
assassination attempts, was the major turning point in the lives
of Pakistani Jihadis. They were rounded up like criminals. The
state which had been the main supporter and perpetuator of the
Pakistani Jihadis turned its back on them. Several Jihadis gave up
their struggle and several turned against the state. Bin Yameen was
the most prominent of those who came in the later category.
On August 21, 2004, Pakistan’s security agencies raided Bin
Yameen’s house in Peshawar. He was sleeping with his wife. In the
next room were two prominent Jihadis, Asif Chakwali and Mufti
Sagheer (now in Adyala jail in Rawalpindi). Both Asif and Sagheer
broke the police cordon and escaped, but the police who had broken
into the house captured both Bin Yameen and his wife and literally
dragged them to their vehicles. Bin Yameen was half sleep and half
awake, but he saw strangers touching his wife. He attacked them
like a wounded lion. He tried to snatch their guns. It took dozens
of security personnel to overwhelm him. Both his wife and he were
imprisoned. Later his wife and son were released, but Bin Yameen,
who had been injured during his transportation, never forgot the
humiliation suffered by his wife at the hands of Pakistan’s security
personnel. He was completely unaware of any plot to assassinate
Musharraf, and during the interrogation refused to answer the
questions thrown at him. In response, he would either spit in the
faces of the inquiry officers, or threaten that on his release he would
destroy them and their families. This resulted in a vicious cycle of
torture. His inquisitors hung him upside down and beat him, but
he only yelled one thing in response, “If I stay alive I will return
and avenge all of this.” They tied and shackled him but his rage
remained unabated. After two months of torture and interrogation,
the prison guards and inquiry officers tired of him and sent him to
solitary confinement in an ISI detention cell, without a police case
being presented against him and without a court trial. He spent two
and half years in solitary confinement without further torture or
interrogation, but his venom against the Pakistan Army remained
high. His prison guards were used to his verbal assaults on them
and the Pakistan Army, and sometimes retaliated to his threats
with jokes. Just days before his release when he was collecting his
clothes and belongings, a corporal asked him in a light vein, “But
Bin Yameen, what if you found me walking on the road one day?”
Bin Yameen’s face turned red and he said in a cold voice, “I will slit
your throat.”
In an exclusive interview in 2010, a senior Taliban leader
reminded me that North Waziristan’s environment is so weird it
can turn any person into a takfeeri within 20 days. As soon as
Bin Yameen was released from the ISI’s cell, he was summoned to
North Waziristan where his hatred of Pakistan’s military establish-
ment gained ideological flavor. Mufti Aftab from North Waziristan
was Al-Qaeda’s emissary in Swat. He took Bin Yameen to North
Waziristan. For the Al-Qaeda ideologue, Bin Yameen’s life meant
nothing. He was a militant who was born for Islam and would
sacrifice his life for Islam, although his knowledge of Islam was
basic. But his hatred of the Pakistan Army was unbelievable, and
this was exactly what Al-Qaeda was looking for. Bin Yameen
was given money and Uzbek and Arab fighters to set up his own
maaskar (training camp). His first task was essentially simple. He
was to hijack the Tekrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM)
founded by Maulana Sufi Mohammad, after whose detention it was
controlled by Fazlullah. Thousands of people were associated with
the TNSM and committed to the enforcement of Islamic laws in
Swat and Malakand divisions. Bin Yameen was silently planted in
this group.
Al-Qaeda was frustrated after the Lal Masjid operation. Dozens
of people had been killed and the most useful Al-Qaeda asset in
Islamabad sacrificed without the main purpose being served: not
a single person stood up in revolt. Maulana Abdul Aziz had been
detained and humiliated. Abdul Rasheed Ghazi and others were
buried among tears. This was when Osama bin Laden put his foot
down and appointed an ameer-e-khuruj (commander for revolt) in
Pakistan. This was Abdul Hameed, alias Abu Obaida al-Misri. Bin
Laden instructed him to organize a revolt in the country as soon as
possible, and Al-Qaeda urged its Middle Eastern donors to arrange
funds on an urgent basis. When these funds were received they were
hurriedly distributed amongst all the Al-Qaeda associates including
Baitullah Mehsud and Bin Yameen. Targets were then identified to
stir up maximum friction in the country, with the aim of making the
state ungovernable.
One of the targets was Benazir Bhutto, the only politician in
the country to have supported the Lal Masjid operation. However,
for a prolonged engagement against the Pakistan Army, a revolt
in the Swat Valley (400 kilometers away from Pakistan’s federal
capital, Islamabad) was essential. Immediately after the Lal Masjid
operation, Al-Qaeda mobilized its cadre to provide the logistics for
a revolt in Swat. This came on the third day after the burial of Lal
Masjid’s dead. In Imam Dheri in the Swat Valley, Maulana Fazlullah
(known as the Radio Mullah) and his fellows were sitting sadly.
“What differences do you have with the government?” I asked him.
(Immediately after the Lal Masjid operation I had packed my bags
and arrived in the Swat Valley, which I understood would be the
next theater of war.)
“The government objects to my FM radio stations. I reject those
objections. Mine are non-commercial stations from which I only
broadcast Islamic programs. There are other FM stations which
are also illegal, but since they broadcast music and vulgarity, the
government does not pay any heed to them,” Fazlullah protested
to me. However, Fazlullah’s explanation appeared bizarre. There
had been repeated incidents of violence in the Swat Valley. Militants
were blowing up video shops in the valley and the state’s writ was
a question mark. And, the first reaction to the Lal Masjid operation
had come in the Swat Valley where the militants carried out an
attack on military convoys. Fazlullah said that he had differences
with the Pakistan Army as he considered it a continuation of the
colonial British Army, but he categorically denied that he was behind
any violence.
When I mentioned the attack on the military convoy the day I met
Fazlullah, he explained, “Even today’s attack on the military will
be blamed on me. I tell you, I was with Maulana Abdul Aziz and I
am still with him. But I am convinced that implementing sharia is
the duty of the government, not of an individual. We just demand
that the government implement sharia, and nothing beyond that.”
During the interview, when I tried to blame him for instigating the
violence, he claimed there were several other groups operating in
Swat beyond his control. Fazlullah then got up, apologized to me,
and left. “I need to go to my FM radio station this very moment to
announce first, that I am not behind any of the attacks, and second,
people should not be outraged by the presence of the military in the
area. I need to be in constant contact with the people of the area to
ask them to restrain themselves from counter-attacks and violence,”
Fazlullah said as he departed.
After spending a few days in Swat with the militants I became
convinced that Fazlullah’s and his group’s vision of Islam was indeed
limited to the demand of implementing Islamic laws in the Swat
Valley, an old demand of the people of Swat since the princely State
of Swat was annexed by Pakistan in late 1960s when the courts, in
any case, were run under Islamic laws. But it was clear that beyond
Swat, the militants supported the Taliban resistance, like all other
Pashtuns in the former NWFP and parts of Balochistan.
Notwithstanding the rising tide of violence, a revolution in the
Swat Valley remained questionable. It nevertheless prompted a
military operation. The Fazlullah-led TNSM scattered during the
first military push by December 2007, but as soon as the snow had
melted the dynamics of the Swat Valley changed again.
This group was the largest of all militant groups in the Swat
Valley, and the Pakistani intelligence apparatus labeled it the Tora
Bora Group, as it comprised local Pashtuns, as well as Uzbeks and
Arabs, led by Bin Yameen.
After the defeat of Mullah Fazlullah in December 2007, Bin
Yameen emerged as the top leader, and by January 2008 people
were wondering what happened to the easy-going people of the Swat
Valley. Bin Yameen’s group ambushed military convoys and brutally
slit their throats. They took camera footage of this and forwarded
it to television channels. Waziristan’s Qari Hussain Mehsud, a
former leader of the anti-Shiite Laskhar-e-Jhangvi, together with
Qari Hussain and Bin Yameen, established a reign of terror there.
Defiance meant a very painful death. Within few weeks, the entire
police network in the Swat Valley had collapsed and army recruits
avoided postings to Swat like the plague. Pakistan’s government
tried to arm the locals against the militants, but whoever took up
arms against them met a horrible fate. Pir Samiullah, a distinguished
Brelvi spiritual guide, and his disciples were armed by the Pakistan
army with sophisticated weapons, but before his followers could
take any action his darbar (shrine) was attacked. Pir Samiullah and
dozens of his disciples were killed. Bin Yameen frantically searched
for the spiritual leader’s body but did not find it. Finally he found
that the Pir had been buried. Bin Yameen had the body exhumed
and hanged it on a pole for several days as an example to those who
would defy him. Bin Yameen’s men looted all the banks of Swat and
attacked the vehicles which came from Peshawar with the salaries of
local government employees. He was thus able to enlarge his arsenal
and look after his men’s daily rations.
By late 2008 Swat was completely in the hands of the insurgents
and the government had lost all control, with the insurgents having
severed its supply lines. The army then abandoned most of its
ground checkpoints and maintained only a limited presence on some
of the mountain tops where at least the soldiers could be supplied
with food and ammunition by helicopter. For the Pakistan Army the
situation had reached a dead-end. The international media played on
this by running stories of the Swat Valley being lost to the Taliban.
Stunned senior military officials at the military’s general headquar-
ters in Rawalpindi did not know what to do next. There was a
consensus, however, that fighting the militants was impossible unless
a much larger force was used, and for that the military would have
to remove some its forces from the Indian border. Pakistani armed
forces think tanks brainstormed and arrived at the conclusion that
the solution lay in accepting the demand of the militants for Islamic
laws in Swat.
ISI’s internal security section was convinced that this task could
be achieved through Maulana Sufi Mohammad. ISI had a long
standing arrangement with Sufi Mohammad, so while he was in jail
he was lodged comfortably. The reasons for his being kept in jail
were to show that action had been taken against him after he had
led thousands of youths to Afghanistan following the US attack in
2001, and because two ISI agents wanted to keep him under wraps
as an ace up their sleeve to be played at a time of need. But Sufi
Mohammad was not an ISI proxy. He was really a simple man who
wanted to revive the Islamic laws previously enforced in the Swat
Valley when it was a princely state. Nonetheless, he was loyal to the
military establishment and so was cunningly manipulated by it in the
1990s to destabilize the then premier Benazir Bhutto’s government
in the mid-1990s by blocking the Silk Route.
The colonels and majors from the Pakistan Army, who had visited
him frequently, next persuaded Sufi Mohammed to issue a statement
condemning the violence in the Swat Valley and distancing himself
from his son-in-law, Maulvi Fazlullah. As the radical had been
raised by his father-in-law, and the fighters in the entire Swat Valley
including the militants were his devotees, the ISI was confidant that
once Sufi Mohammad had retaken charge the situation in Swat
would change dramatically.
The Al-Qaeda camps of North Waziristan saw it differently.
TNSM had effectively been hijacked by Al-Qaeda and its ideas had
been implanted in the Swat militants’ minds. Pakistan’s armed forces
would find themselves in a quagmire. Sure enough the military soon
ran so short of supplies and resources with their supply lines cut, that
they could not prevent the militants from regrouping and launching
new operations inside Afghanistan against the NATO-ISAF forces.
As matters deteriorated, ordinary people found themselves obliged
to think along different lines for their own survival. They accepted
the lasting reality of the militancy and urged Pakistan’s military
establishment to change its policies on supporting the US terror
war. Sufi Mohammad’s release and activation could have guaranteed
peace and given a breathing space to the military to come up with
a fresh strategy to right matters, but Al-Qaeda, which could not
oppose Sufi Mohammad, could equally ill afford to see him emerge
as an ideologue operated by Pakistan’s military establishment.
Al Qaeda then worked on a dispensation to encircle Sufi
Mohammad and so isolate Swat. In January 2009 Swat was like
a ghost valley where almost every nook and cranny was occupied
by militants. But with Maulana Sufi Mohammad launched, the
situation abruptly changed. Yesterday’s criminal was brought to
Peshawar with all government protocols, and there the agreement
for the enforcement of Islamic laws in the Swat, Malakand, and
Kohistan areas was signed. “We will soon open dialogue with the
Taliban. We will ask them to lay down their weapons. We are
hopeful that they will not let us down. We will stay here in the [Swat]
Valley until peace is restored,” Sufi Mohammad told reporters. The
military apparatus in Rawalpindi breathed a sigh of relief after the
agreement had been signed. They had successfully played their ace
and the situation was under control. Mullah Fazlullah announced a
ceasefire.
Normal life returned to Swat. People thanked God for peace in
the valley. But the international press mounted a campaign against
the Pakistan government for its agreement to enforce Islamic laws
in the Swat Valley. They saw it as a harbinger of things to come.
Pakistan’s government discussed the situation with its allies in the
War on Terror and convinced them that was the only solution if
peace was to prevail in Swat. It then disengaged Pakistani troops
from the valley and relocated them to Pakistan’s tribal area to use
against the militant networks operating from there across the border
to fight NATO troops. The international community supported this
move.
However, Al-Qaeda was ever-vigilant to the rapidly normalizing
situation in Swat. What aspect of Islam was being enforced in the
valley was irrelevant to them. The issue was that peace would
disengage Pakistan’s armed forces from the valley and enable them
to start operations in the tribal areas again, which would affect
Al-Qaeda’s fight in Afghanistan. Once again Al-Qaeda’s emissaries
were activated. Bin Yameen was asked to play his role. At a juncture
when everything had been going according to the plan of the US and
Pakistani authorities, militants under the command of Bin Yameen
stormed Buner, only 65 miles from Islamabad, in the first week of
April 2009.
The ceasefire agreement broke and the media flashed banner
headlines that Pakistan was only 65 miles away from capture by
the Taliban. The situation which had improved in February 2009
had deteriorated dramatically by April 2009. The government put
its foot down and tried to approach Sufi Mohammad again, but
he was not to be found. His phones were answered by young men
who denied any communication with the man who had started the
radical movement in Swat.
Everything had changed, especially when Sufi Mohammad
announced an end to his support for peace. The government looked
for ways to reach Sufi Mohammad through different channels
but was unable to find him. Despite all the pressure on the liberal
and secular government of the Pakistan Peoples Party and the
Pakistan Army, the president of Pakistan, Asif Zardari, signed the
ordinance for the enforcement of Islamic laws in Malakand, Swat,
and Kohistan, as a last resort to win over Sufi Mohammed. For
Al-Qaeda this had never been the object. Their real aim was to
create friction, to arrive at a situation in the theater of war in which
the Pakistan Army remained entangled until they withdrew their
support for the US war in Afghanistan.
When Sufi Mohammad finally appeared people covered the grassy
ground in Mingora Swat in their thousands to listen to his address.
The people of Swat as well as the Pakistani military establishment
rested their hopes in Sufi Mohammad – that he would diffuse the
situation of confrontation after the Taliban’s capture of the Buner
district. But when Sufi Mohammad emerged onto the stage he was
not alone. He was accompanied by eight suicide bombers. Bin
Yameen came to Sufi Mohammad and gave him a written speech,
saying, “This is from the mujahideen. Please read this speech.”
Sufi Mohammad nodded in assent. Then he started speaking to the
crowd. Every word was a bomb. The speech mercilessly butchered
the peace accord.
“There is no room for democracy in Islam,” Sufi Mohammad
said. He called Western democracy a “system of infidels” which had
divided Islamic scholars and Muslims into factions, “The Supreme
Court and the high courts were two other house of idol worshippers
which are strengthening this system of heresy based on the betrayal
of God.” He gave a deadline for all the judges from Malakand
division – including the Kohistan district – to withdraw within four
days and set up a darul qaza (Islamic court) to hear appeals against
the decisions of the government’s Qazi courts. He also demanded
the appointment of Qazis at the district and tehsil (lower admin-
istrative units) levels throughout the division (that is, the higher
administrative level in the province).
“The government will be responsible for all the consequences if
our demands are not implemented,” he warned. The cleric then said
the Islamic system must be established throughout the world because
the world belonged to God, and the existing laws were unacceptable.
He said it was impossible to implement the Nizam-e-Adl ordinance –
promulgated on the nod of the president and the National Assembly
– without support from the army and the police.
Sufi Mohammad’s speech changed everything. The international
media publicized his address and depicted it as Swat’s rule by
the Taliban and the beginning of a global Caliphate. The fiercest
reaction came from the United States. “The biggest challenge for the
US is fighting the Taliban in Pakistan,” US Senator Ted Kaufman
said. “Pakistan is a big problem right now,” he told reporters near
the Afghanistan border. The US senator said he had been troubled
by Pakistan’s recent truce with the Taliban in Swat. “I thought a lot
of the problem was that the Pakistani government just didn’t have
the will [to deal with the Taliban]. … But now that I’ve been over
there, I’m not sure they have the capacity.” Richard Holbrooke, the
US special envoy to the region, added, “The Swat deal between the
Taliban and the government of Pakistan could affect Islamabad too,
which is only 100 km from the troubled valley.”
Al-Qaeda had successfully applied its dialectical process to spin
the situation in favor of its strategy. In May 2009 came the second
battle of Swat, when Pakistan’s military launched a ruthless operation
against the militants called Operation Rah-e-Rasat (Operation for
the Right Path). Approximately 2.2 million people in the Swat and
Malakand divisions were displaced as a result, and housed in the
refugee camps all across the country. The Pakistan Army deployed
its elite Mangla Strike Corps, otherwise used in battles against
India. The military also used air cover to advance and bombed the
militants’ hideouts. Special Services Group (SSG) commandos also
took part in the Swat action. Hundreds of militants were rounded up
and immediately killed without arrest or trial. The battle continued
until the last week of July 2009, when the militants finally retreated
to the Hindu Kush mountains and the Afghan provinces of Kunar
and Nuristan.
From the Al-Qaeda viewpoint, its strategy was a success as it
diverted the Pakistan army’s Operation Lion Heart from Mohmand
and Bajaur. Militants regrouped in the tribal areas and launched
powerful strikes on the two neighboring Afghan provinces. As a
result, NATO was forced to flee its border checkpoints in Kunar and
left all its main bases in Nuristan unattended. The Swat operation
appeared a complete success for Al-Qaeda’s dialectical process as the
Pakistani nation stood completely divided on ideology.
Pakistan’s secularists then boldly stood up against the Islamization
of Pakistan. They called for the wings of Islamic seminaries in the
country to be clipped. The government arranged religious confer-
ences led by Sufis who spoke out against the Taliban. The Taliban
retaliated by killing prominent Islamic scholars like Sarfraz Naeemi.
It seemed at first that the situation had turned against the militants,
but behind the scenes Al-Qaeda had succeeded in exploiting the
ideological contradictions in Pakistan’s society, and deepened the
ideological divide. With this clash between Pakistani Islamists
(mostly from seminaries and religious parties that did not support
Al-Qaeda) and the secular forces of the country, Al-Qaeda’s dialec-
tical process aimed to create a situation where Pakistan would
remain non-governable until Al-Qaeda ideologues and fighters
successfully seized control of two provinces, Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa
and Balochistan. These two provinces were then intended to become
the hub of Al-Qaeda activities to provide recruitment and training
for their battle against the NATO troops in Afghanistan.
In pursuit of this, Al-Qaeda’s dialectical process, thousands of
people were displaced, hundreds of people were killed, the national
economy of Pakistan was on the verge of collapse, and Pakistan
became completely dependent on US aid. But from all of this,
Al-Qaeda could claim only limited success. It had succeeded in
gaining a measure of control over parts of Pakistan’s tribal areas,
parts of its urban centers such as Bannu, Lakki Marwat, and
Peshawar, but was well aware that its control over even these areas
would last no more than few weeks at best.
However, during this time Al-Qaeda took advantage of the
situation and carried out attacks on NATO’s supply line, regrouped
its members and launched attacks on the NATO troops in
Afghanistan, and succeeded in establishing control over 80 percent
of Afghanistan and forcing a situation where Washington had
to bring in additional troops. That application of the dialectical
process might have seemed brutal, but for Al-Qaeda this was the
only way to confront the world’s richest and most powerful nations,
and to bring this war to a winning conclusion.