Patrick French, a scholar and one with family connections in Pakistan’s Swat region, recently allowed to be ruled by Sharia law by the Paki government, argues that this is a disastrous policy. He asserts that the Swat settlement was an appeasement of radical Taliban leaders who will continue to foment unrest and violence further and further into the Pakistan. Here is a good summary of his thoughts:
Shariah law has been imposed, allowing elderly clerics to dictate the daily lives of the Swati people. President Zardari’s foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, describes this as “a local solution to a local problem,” but the deal with the Taliban represents the most serious blow to the country’s territorial integrity since the civil war of 1971, when the land that became Bangladesh was given up. When territory is surrendered in this way, it is very difficult for the state to recover it. The central premise behind the war on terrorism was that extremist groups should not be allowed sanctuaries from which to threaten the rest of the world. In that context, the loss of Swat offers the Taliban and other extremist groups a template for the future.
The Swat deal has ramifications for US negotiations with the Afghan Taliban as the fear of Swat-like appeasement must be watched carefully. Pakistan’s decision to make a deal with the Swat Taliban seems to have come from a position of weakness, something US military officials already have voiced that would be loathed to do. Obama’s troop surge may indeed be deployed for the central aim of making some security breakthroughs, where the Afghan and US government could then negotiate from a more stable, strengthened position.
French’s jarring description of the Paki-Swat deal is a fair warning of the challenges faced in dealing with the Taliban, as there is the real fear that the Taliban will not stop or be appeased, that they will keep on ‘grabbing for land and power.’
FPA’s Bilal Qureshi’s Pakistan blog discusses this issue and much more.
