“They entered, and everyone said that they were suicide attackers,” said one of the mothers there. “They all entered and started shooting. It was horrific. The windows were shattered. Everyone was running, but I was able to get out with my baby.”
But not all were so fortunate. Two women were shot dead in the delivery room itself and another died beside an incubator shielding her baby. A further 20 people, including even new-born babies, were injured by bullets. The roster of the dead was exceedingly grim. The attackers murdered 24 people, including mothers who had just given birth. Worse, the death toll listed 2 new-born babies, shot at close range. Yes, new-born babies! You may well ask: What kind of monsters could shoot new-born babies?
But, of course, we Pakistanis have had a long and brutal familiarity with just such monsters. Remember Army Public School, Peshawar, when six gunmen killed 134 people, most of them children? Or the bombings of the shrines of Data Gunj Buksh, Shahbaz Qalander, Rahman Baba? The murder of Benazir Bhutto? The murder of more than 80,000 Pakistani citizens?
These savages were born out of the neo-Hobbesian anarchy that the already undergoverned state of Afghanistan had been reduced to as a result of the war between the USSR and the US-Saudi-Pakistan-backed irregulars referred to as the Mujaheddin. From that rubble of a collapsed state and atomised society, only the strongest, most ruthless, and most ferocious entity could emerge, and triumph. And that proved to be the Taliban.
With Pakistan as the principal victim outside Afghanistan of these modern-day Halagu Khans, our authorities attempted to deal with them by way of appeasement. The Tribal areas were practically abandoned to them. Even Swat and Malakand were handed over to them. It was in these regions that they set up their quasi-states, which they ruled with the aid of terror and brute force, and from which they pursued their murderous forays into the rest of Pakistan.
Our milquetoast civilian leaderships remained, almost without exception, extremely weak – to the point of being virtual collaborators. Our military leaderships alternated between the sporadic use of force and attempts to negotiate treaties and make “deals”. These merely resulted in the further strengthening of the enemy, violence flaring soon after the agreements became effective.
Let me mention just a few of these.
In April 2004, as terror squads murdered our citizens and insurgency devoured Pakistan’s sovereign territory and killed our soldiers, talks were held and an agreement made with Nek Muhammad Wazir, a major Taliban commander in South Waziristan. Immediately after the signing of the Shakai agreement, Nek Mohammed renounced its terms, recommenced hostilities against Pakistani forces and systematically murdered the tribal elders who had helped negotiate the agreement. It took a US drone strike to halt his career of butchery and waging war against Pakistan.
In February 2005, the Pakistani government reached a peace agreement with Baitullah Mehsud of the TTP in the Srarogha area of South Waziristan. However, in the months following this agreement, attacks by the Taliban militants in South Waziristan in fact dramatically increased. The peace deal had served no purpose other than to embolden Mhsud and prolong and spread militancy. Mehsud’s numerous terror strikes beyond FATA included the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. He was eventually killed by a U.S. drone strike in August 2009. Yet the organization he founded remained strong and was later led by Hakimullah Mehsud and Mullah Fazlullah.
In the Swat Valley, trouble had begun as far back as 1994, when Maulana Sufi Mohammad sought to enforce what he considered the Shari’a. But he was driven out by the Swatis themselves. However, the MMA government that came to power in 2002 adopted a softer posture. Sufi Mohammed’s son-in-law Fazlullah, who used an illegal FM radio station to propagate his primitive views, established a parallel government near Matta in the lower valley. Notorious for its throat-slittings and other violence against the citizens, Fazlullah’s regime sought to expand the area under its control, reducing this beautiful valley to a war zone. In 2008, the newly elected ANP-PPP government in KPK hastily extended an offer of peace talks.
Following a series of meetings, the two sides reached a 16-point agreement to bring an end to violence and restore peace to the valley. Within five days of inking the peace deal, the Taliban refused to surrender their arms, as was stipulated in the agreement. Within a month, militants began attacking government officials and installations, as well as destroying electronics shops and schools, kidnapping and beheading civilians and attacking police and army convoys.
Yet another agreement was negotiated in February 2009. This one lasted a month before it was violated and Swat suffered another spasm of extreme violence. The Fazlullah-led Taliban overran Mingora, the commercial centre of the Swat Valley, and then pushed into neighbouring Buner and Shangla districts and began to threaten Swabi and Mardan and Islamabad itself. In Rawalpindi, the GHQ was subjected to a terror attack.
The Taliban advance caused Pakistan to launch Operations Black Thunderstorm in Buner and Rah-e-Rast in Swat. Within two months of these major military operations, most of Fazlullah’s commanders were either arrested or killed and Fazlullah had fled to Afghanistan. He would later emerge as head of the TTP.
Apart from these major peace agreements (Shakai, Srarogha and Swat), there were also many unwritten peace deals. For example, in September 2006, Pakistan recognized the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan, an association of chieftains led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazir, as the de facto force controlling North Waziristan. A similar deal was reached with militant commander Faqir Muhammad in Bajaur in August 2008. Various understandings were reached with Mangal Bagh in Khyber Agency. All these agreements were quickly violated.
The sad fact is that all these failed agreements had the effect of enhancing the prestige of the militant leaders. By levelling demands on the government and then entering into negotiations, the Taliban demonstrated to civilians that militant leaders are strong enough to sit at the same table as the country’s top military officials. This solidified support for the Taliban among the populations under their rule.
What needed to be understood was that quelling an insurrection of this magnitude is a long, slow process, requiring unwavering determination and enormous stamina, perhaps over several decades. Yes, talks can certainly be a part of the process…but only after the enemy has been militarily broken and is therefore forced to come to the table. This, finally, was appreciated by General Raheel Sharif who, despite the hesitancy of the government of the day, planned and executed Operation Zarb-e-Azb with considerable success and rightly earned applause.
But, and this is my key point here, all that General Sharif achieved on the battlefield is at risk of being lost on the negotiating table. I refer to the negotiations between the US and the Taliban and whatever “deals” are arrived at between them.
Has it not struck those concerned that these are not the kinds of people who honour commitments? Donald the Desperate may achieve an agreement that he can boast about in his election campaign. But the agreement will, inevitably, not be honoured. We’ve been there, done that. As the American saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” For the struggle will be on for the control of Afghanistan – a struggle which will, once again, reduce that country to anarchy, and whose writhing tentacles will inevitably strike into Pakistan.
Is that what we want? Haven’t we seen enough of these baby-killers?