SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 10, No. 14, October 10, 2011

PAKISTAN

Print

Peace Deal: Prelude to a Fiasco
Ambreen Agha
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

On October 2, 2011, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said that his administration was ready to hold negotiations with all militant groups, including Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, TTP’s ‘Deputy Commander’ and ‘Commander-in-Chief’ for its Bajaur Chapter in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), spoke to the media on phone on October 3, 2011, declaring, “TTP welcomes the Prime Minister’s offer.” Before the bells could peal out for an imminent ‘peace’, unsurprisingly, the TTP ‘commander’ set out two unattainable preconditions for talks: One, the Government should reconsider its relationship with the United States (US); and, two, enforce Islamic Shari’ah (law) in the country.

The offer of ‘peace talks’ comes at the time when Islamabad’s operations in the tribal region have had little impact on TTP’s jihadist operational capabilities, and this is reflected in the confidence that underpins Faqir Muhammad’s response to the Prime Minister. The organisational strength and systemic growth of TTP’s leadership has, both qualitatively and quantitatively, taken a quantum leap in over the past years.

According to the SATP data, Pakistan witnessed 6,769 fatalities [including 3,135 civilians, 1,211 Security Forces (SF) personnel and 2,423 terrorists] between 2003 and 2007. After the formation of TTP on December 14, 2007, however, the fatalities recorded a steep rise, totalling as many as 30,843  in this latter phase (SATP data till October 9, 2011). Crucially, the number of suicide attacks also increased dramatically. 75 suicide attacks had been recorded between 2002 and 2007, killing 1,183 persons; the number of suicide attacks witnessed since January 2008 stands at 219, with at least 3,600 persons killed. 

Some of the largest attacks that Pakistan has witnessed since the formation of TTP, for which the outfit has either claimed responsibility or has been accused, include:

May 13, 2011: Two suicide bombers attacked Frontier Constabulary trainees in the Shabqadar tehsil (revenue unit) of Charsadda District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, killing 73 personnel and 17 civilians, and injuring another 140.

May 28, 2010: At least 95 worshippers were killed and 92 injured as seven assailants, including three suicide bombers, attacked Ahmadi mosques in the Model Town and Garhi Shahu areas of Lahore in Punjab.

October 10, 2008: At least 85 persons were killed and another 200 wounded, when a suicide bomber in an explosives-laden vehicle attacked an anti-TTP jirga of the Ali Khel tribe in the Khadezai area of the Upper Orakzai Agency in FATA.

December 27, 2007: 31 people were killed and over 100 others wounded when a suicide attacker riding on a motorbike blew himself up after firing at former Premier Benazir Bhutto who was waving to her supporters from her vehicle's sun roof in Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi. Benazir was killed in the attack. After the May 13, 2011, attack the TTP spokesman Ehsaullah Ehsan declared, “Pakistan will be the prime target followed by United States (US). The US had been on a man-hunt for Osama and now Pakistani rulers are on our hit-list as we also killed Benazir Bhutto in a suicide attack."

Benazir Bhutto’s assassination was the first major attack by the TTP after its formation. The era of the suicide bomb has seen military installations and religious gatherings of rival denominations as its primary targets. Suicide bombings and the recruitment of young children in TTP suicide squads heralded a new phase of terrorism in Pakistan.

The TTP was established on a powerful base of Islamist extremist organisations that existed and pursued a jihadist agenda in Pakistan even prior to its creation in December 2007. The organisation only formalized and further radicalized the structure of what were, previously, loosely knit Pakistani jihadist forces affiliated with the Taliban since the 1980’s. The cadre of the Pakistani Taliban movement (as distinct from the Afghan Taliban) came from the rank and file of mainstream Islamist political parties, whose alliance held power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from 2002 to 2007. It was during General Pervez Musharraf’s Presidency that an alliance of religious parties won the Provincial elections of 2002 (as well as significant numbers in the Parliament) to rule North Western Pakistan. The two most powerful and orthodox religious political parties that comprised the alliance were Jama’at-e-Islami (JeI) and Jama’at Ulema-e-Islam (JuI). Both these mainstream political parties have played an active role in Pakistan’s jihadist politics.

The JuI, in particular, experienced a shift towards increasing radicalization during the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The JuI actively participated in the Afghanistan war of the 1980s, when madrassas established by this ‘Deobandi’ organisation provided holy warriors against the Soviets. Through the 1990s the JuI remained deeply involved with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Indeed, thousands of Afghan and Pakistani students from the madrasa run by JuI formed the nucleus of the Taliban militia. The mushrooming of thousands of Deobandi madrassas along the border with Afghanistan, deeply mobilized other religiously motivated political parties in Pakistan, producing a new breed of radical Islamists who, over the years, spilled across into Pakistan. The rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 1996 also encouraged the formation of Pakistani militant groups such as Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). Most of the top militant leaders in Pakistan’s tribal region, who later formed the TTP, were initially associated with the JuI or groups raised out of JuI madrassas. Terrorist commanders and leaders like Baitullah Mehsud, Mufti Wali-ur-Rehman, Maulana Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur have all emerged from the ranks of the JuI.  Under military rulers like Zia-ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan moved further towards becoming an ideological Islamist state, enormously emboldening the clergy. Significantly, the JeI and other Islamists were co-opted by Zia’s Government, serving in his martial law cabinet. The edifice of a military-mullah combine was created, and the Islamists penetrated deep into state institutions.

It was the Lal Masjid [Red Mosque] imbroglio in Islamabad in 2007 that pushed the Islamists across the Rubicon, turning them against their erstwhile state sponsors. Asma Jehangir, the Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), commenting on the high level independent inquiry into the Lal Masjid Operation, observed:

Shuja Nawaz also confirms, in Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army and the Wars Within, that the Lal Masjid radicals, prior to their declaration of a parallel judicial system to enforce Islamic laws in Islamabad, were trained and supported by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).

There is a clear, and now widely acknowledged, history of collusion between a range of Islamist terrorist formations and the Army and intelligence, as well as the political, establishment in Pakistan. This has generated a ‘blowback’, forcing the country’s SFs to struggle to contain ‘renegade’ groups that have escaped or rebelled against military-intelligence control. It is, indeed, the extremist-terrorist spaces created for state supported groups that have allowed anti-state groups to flourish as well. All these groups have been mobilized on a pan-Islamist ideology of jihad, which makes clear distinctions between cadres of different groups impossible.

TTP is currently led by Hakimullah Mehsud, who took over the reins of the movement after the death of his brother and the TTP founder, Baitullah Mehsud, in a US missile strike on August 5, 2009. The Mehsud brothers belonged to the Mehsud tribe of the South Waziristan Agency in FATA. Projecting the fanatical Talibanised version of Islam, Baitullah Mehsud had declared in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in October 2007, “Only jihad can bring peace to the world.”  The activities of the Talibanised extremists within Pakistan were no secret and found visible expression in pamphlets and audio-video recordings circulated across the country, slogans on walls and open public mobilization. Thus, Shahid Nadeem wrote in Daily Times on August 7, 2002,

Headquartered in the South Waziristan Agency of FATA, TTP has spread its networks into all of Pakistan’s four provinces, establishing various ‘Chapters’ and groups led by local ‘commanders’ with common organisational goals. The TTP has also made its presence felt in neighbouring Afghanistan in recent times. 

There is an overlap of membership between TTP and other sectarian terrorist outfits that operate across the country, each pursuing its own internal and external agendas. On November 23, 2008, the then TTP spokesman, Mullah Omer, had said, “The Taliban are present in Karachi and have links with the LeJ, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and other banned religious organisations.” Apart from these sectarian groups, there are others with which the TTP has established linkages, primarily including Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), HuM and Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami (HuJI). Media reports on January 5, 2011, indicated that five terrorist groups had joined the TTP and were working under its umbrella TTP. With common aims and enemies, LeJ, SSP, JeM, HuM and Harkat-ul-Ansar (HuA) had ‘merged’ with TTP. TTP spokesman Azam Tariq declared, “We have not forced anyone to join TTP, and the leaders and activists of the banned religious organisations have united themselves under the umbrella of the TTP on their own choice.”

The US Department of State had put the TTP on its list of Foreign Terrorist Organisations on September 1, 2010. On January 18, 2011, Britain moved to ban the TTP, making it illegal to belong to or raise funds for the organisation in Britain. Subsequently, on July 5, 2011, Canada designated the TTP as a terrorist organisation. Vic Toews, Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, noted that putting TTP on the terrorism blacklist was “an essential part of our efforts to combat terrorism and keep our communities safe.” On July 29, 2011, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) put the TTP on its international anti-terrorism sanctions list in a move highlighting the growing threat from the outfit.

The Pakistani military has launched a succession of offensives against the TTP, but the movement continues to thrive. From time to time, different ‘chapters’ of the organisation have entered into deals with Islamabad, to secure transient relief and consolidate their operations further. The TTP has now consolidated its presence and influence across the tribal areas, particularly in the Agencies of North and South Waziristan. Indeed, in September 2006, in an attempt to end the violence raging since 2004 between the ‘Pakistani Taliban’ and the Pakistan Armed Forces, in a negotiated settlement, the Pakistan Government recognised the ‘Islamic Emirate of Waziristan’, comprising of Waziristani chieftains with close ties to the Taliban, as the de facto SF for Waziristan. This peace Agreement finally broke in August 2007 after the Lal Masjid siege. A three day military operation, from October 8, 2007 to October 10, 2007, was launched in the Mir Ali Town of North Waziristan Agency in which at least 150 militants were killed. Clashes broke out after militants set off Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and conducted ambushes on the SFs on October 7, 2007. Though there have been other military operations by the Pakistan Armed Forces against Taliban militants in FATA, Pakistan continues to live on a sword’s edge in the region.

On January 28, 2008, there were reports of clandestine talks between the Government and the TTP. Militant 'commander' Maulana Faqir Muhammad was identified as the ‘political face’ of the TTP for the purpose of holding talks with the Government. Subsequently, on February 24, 2008, after Provincial elections had installed a new Government, the TTP said that they were ready for talks, but only if the new Provincial regime rejected Musharraf’s “war on terror” in the country’s tribal belt. On May 13, 2008, the KP Government and the TTP agreed to the implementation of Shari’ah Nizam-e-Adl Regulations, 1999, in the Malakand Division within one month. The TTP’s demand for the implementation of Shari’ah has been settled, the KP unit President of the ruling Awami National Party, Afrasiab Khattak, informed the media, after a second round of talks with TTP representatives from Swat. However, the Pakistan Government, on June 9, 2008, scrapped the peace deal with the TTP after militants reneged on their promise to stop violence.

The present peace deal offered by the Prime Minister to the TTP and other terrorist groupings within Pakistan is bound to produce another fiasco. It comes at a time of escalating terrorist violence, widening instability across the AfPak region, growing Pakistani state adventurism, and the declining coherence of state institutions within the country. Islamabad has failed to learn any lessons from past failures, and has repeatedly sought accommodation with fanatical, religiously intolerant, misogynist and violent groupings, even as radical Islamist mobilisation remains at the core of all domestic politics and the Army’s model of crisis management. The Prime Minister’s blandishments will do little to contain the TTP and other extremist factions within the country, or to stall Pakistan’s hurtling descent into chaos.

INDIA

Print

Maharashtra: Deep Slumber
Deepak Kumar Nayak
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

On October 3, 2011, Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres killed a civilian, identified as Mahendra Bawankar, in the Kothi village of Gadchiroli District, on suspicion of being a Police informer. Bawankar had been abducted the previous night by a group of 10 to 15 Maoists from the village. 

Earlier, on September 20, the Maoist cadres abducted Ranu alias Kiran Pusali (30) and his wife Jaswanda alias Devli (25), both former Maoists, from a relative's house in village Jhari in Dhanora tehsil (revenue unit) in Gadchiroli District and shot them dead on a hillock near the village, presuming them to have turned Police informers. Ranu, a native of Nelgunda village in Bhamragad tehsil, had surrendered to the Police on May 17, 2010, while Jaswanda of Bhimpur village in Dhanora tehsil, had left the CPI-Maoist on August 18, 2010.

Elsewhere in the District, the Maoists abducted and subsequently shot dead one Borra Vidpi (40) of Gopnar village and threw his body on Hedra Road in Bhamragad tehsil. Vidpi was also branded a Police informer.

31 civilians have already been killed by the Maoists in Maharashtra in 2011 till October 9, a figure that exceeds the total civilian killings (22) in the whole of 2010. This is by far the highest number of civilian fatalities in the State in a year since 2005.

Fatalities in Left-wing Extremism in Maharashtra 2005-2011

There was a spike in SF fatalities in Maharashtra in 2009, but such losses have diminished sharply since, largely as a result of avoidance of confrontation with the Maoists. The high casualty figure among Maoists in 2011, as compared to an insignificant three in 2010 would, on first sight, suggest a dramatic augmentation of operations, but fails to inspire confidence; of the 25 Maoist fatalities claimed by the Police, only two bodies have been recovered. Even in 2009, with 23 Maoist fatalities claimed, just three bodies were recovered.

Some of the major incidents of civilian killings during the period include:

July 17, 2011: A group of CPI-Maoist cadres reportedly killed three persons including a sarpanch (village head) in Korchi Taluka (revenue sub-division) in Gadchiroli District. The victims identified as Motiram Katenge (50), sarpanch of Dabri village, Sudhakar Koreti (40) and Paharsinh Kumre (55), were killed in Bijepar village and their bodies were dumped in the neighbouring Mohgaon Tola village.

May 5, 2011: A landmine blast triggered by CPI-Maoist cadres killed six persons of a family, including a five-year-old boy, on Gadchiroli-Rajnandgaon road near Tavitola village in the Dhanora Police Station limits in Gadchiroli District. The Naxalites (Left Wing Extremists) are learnt to have followed up the blast with constant firing on the victims.

October 8, 2010: Four civilians including two schoolchildren were killed in the outskirts of the Sawargaon village in Gadchiroli District along the Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh border when a hand grenade, hurled during an encounter between the Maoists and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel, landed in a school compound. Twelve children were critically wounded in the crossfire. The encounter had started after a jeep carrying ITBP personnel was blown up by the Maoists in the Sawargaon forest, killing three personnel instantly. It was not clear who hurled the grenade.

May 16, 2006: In a landmine explosion triggered by the CPI-Maoist cadres, 12 members of a marriage group were killed between Halebada and Patha villages in the Gadchiroli District.

There has been a continuous rise in the number of civilians killed since 2008. The Maoists objective is apparently to prevent the local population from cooperating with the Police. A significant proportion of all the civilians killed have been branded as Police informers by the Maoists.

In a letter written to Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan in July, 2011, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram expressed concern at the worsening Naxalite situation in the State. Earlier, on December 16, 2010, Maharashtra Home Minister R.R. Patil, speaking in the State Assembly,  noted that a ‘large number’ of armed Naxalites were active in Gadchiroli District and were ‘waging a war’ against the state power. The steady worsening of the situation in Gadchiroli is compounded by the steady leaching of the  Maoist influence into the neighbouring Chandrapur, Bhandara and Gondiya Districts, and further into Nagpur and Wardha. The Naxalites have also made their presence felt far into the Western extremities of the State, in Mumbai, Nandurbar, Nashik, Pune and Thane, where a number of Maoists have been arrested.

Earlier, in 2010, intelligence agencies had cautioned the State Government that considerable increase in the activities and influence of the Maoists had been detected in large parts of Gadchiroli and small pockets of Gondia, and that young tribals were being enlisted and trained at camps organised in the District through May and August 2010.

A ‘pan-Vidarbha plan’ for the vistar or spread of the Maoist influence across Maharashtra’s expansive and most backward region, was also discovered when security agencies recovered crucial Maoist documents during an operation in April 2011. The Maoists are said to have formed a V-dalam (squad) to extend the movement across Vidarbha in the State’s east, bordering Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. The Vidarbha region comprises of 11 Districts, Amravati, Akola, Bhandara, Buldana, Chandrapur, Gadchiroli, Gondiya, Nagpur, Wardha, Washim and Yavatmal. A shift in the strategy of the Maoists, increasingly targeting urban areas, has also been noticed. Revelations was made by 15 Maoists arrested by the Maharashtra’s anti-terrorism squad (ATS) in Thane and Pune between April 25 and May 12, 2011, indicated a strong effort to push forward the objectives of the Maoist ‘Urban Perspective’ document.  

There is, however, little to suggest that the State’s counter-insurgency efforts are keeping pace, though the number of encounters has increased from four through 2010, to 10 so far in 2011.

Of these ten encounters in 2011, the SFs suffered (9) losses in five incidents, while no SF casualty was reported in five. In two of the five incidents in which SFs’ suffered losses, two Maoists were also killed. A woman Maoist dalam (squad) ‘commander’ Raneeta alias Ramko Hichami was killed On August 20, 2011. Further, a team of the C-60 Battalion, [the crack unit set up to fight Naxals in the forests of Gadchiroli District in Maharashtra, raised from local adivasi youth], exchanged fire with a CPI-Maoist ‘platoon’ led by ‘commander’ Dinesh near Msanjhurwa and Lalzhari villages under the Duggipar Police Station in Gondia District on September 22, 2011. Though the SFs failed to inflict any fatalities on the Maoists, they recovered 10 kilograms of explosives and 13 detonators, along with some communications equipment and Maoist literature, in what the Police claimed was the biggest operation in the State in years. With no signs of any major operations in Gadchiroli, the epicentre of Maoist violence in the State, this limited operation in the adjoining Gondia District appears to be something of an eye wash.

Maharashtra had a Police Population ratio of 166 per 100,000, as on December 31, 2009, as against an all India average of 129. Ten State Reserve Police Force (SRPF) battalions have been deployed in Gadchiroli. Five battalions of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), including one of the Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA), have also been deployed in Gadchiroli to boost the Police strength.

With little pressure from the SFs, the Maoists have also avoided an escalation, quietly continuing with the tasks of political mobilisation, recruitment, training and wide intimidation of civilian populations, punctuated by demonstrative killings of those deemed to be ‘Police informers’ or others perceived as hostile to their objectives. These campaigns are progressively drying up information flows from affected areas, even as they make the future tasks of the SFs much harder to tackle. Significantly, wherever the SFs expose themselves, the Maoists have not been shy of engagement. Thus, on August 20, 2011, a 70-member Police patrol party, which was approaching Makadchuha in Gadchiroli District from its northern tip, were suddenly fired on from corn fields. The SF team, reinforced by CoBRA commandos after the gunbattle broke out, were taken totally by surprise. Two CoBRA personnel and a woman Maoist cadre were killed.

The grave dangers of a Maoist consolidation across wider areas is being systematically downplayed, even ignored, by the Government and SFs in Maharashtra, even as the usual twaddle about development as a solution is served out regularly. The reality of the developmental marginalization and neglect of the Vidarbha region, and, indeed, of the expansion of the Maoists into the highly developed Western region of the State, is consistently disregarded in all this. A rapidly expanding and systematically consolidated Maoist movement can only present far graver challenges in future.

Civilians

Security Force Personnel

Terrorists/Insurgents

Total

INDIA

Assam

Jammu & Kashmir

Manipur

Left-wing Extremism

Chhattisgarh

Jharkhand

Karnataka

Maharashtra

Total (INDIA)

PAKISTAN

Balochistan

FATA

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Sindh

Total (PAKISTAN)