Tripping on the Tightrope

President-General Musharraf says his support for America's 'war on terror' is in Pakistan's national interest. It is becoming a difficult sell.

At 5am on October 30, three Hellfire missiles slammed into a madrassa or religious seminary in Bajaur, a tribal agency on Pakistan's north-western border with Afghanistan. Eighty young men were killed, all but three of them under the age of 20. It was the worst single act of violence in Pakistan that anyone could remember, and, since the 11 September attacks in America, perhaps ever.

As the body count mounted, so did the outrage, and not only in the tribal regions. At a mass protest in Peshawar on 3 November, the Islamist opposition leader, Fazlur Rehman, gave voice to the sentiments of millions. "Both the United States and the Musharraf government are responsible for what happened in Bajaur," he said. "If the operation had been carried out even by the local (Pakistani) forces, the order would have been given by the US. That is why both are culprits in the case".

But the culprits were unapologetic. The White House praised the Pakistani leader's "determination" in "the war on terror", while the leader took full responsibility for the assault on his own people. The slain were "all (Taliban) militants", Musharraf told a security seminar in Islamabad on 31 October. "They were doing military training. Anyone who says these were innocent religious students is telling lies".

To add weight to the words, security men in Islamabad invited journalists to view a grainy, infra-red video of "militants' training in planting explosives or suicide bombings", allegedly at the very madrassa. One official said the seminary had been frequented by Ayman al Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda's second-in-command to Usama bin Laden. This "fact" was amplified by several US media networks.

Not a soul believed them, and not only because sightings of al Zawahiri are "a dime a dozen" in Bajaur, say US analysts. The conviction in Pakistan is, rather, that the attack on the madrassa was either directly executed by unmanned US-Predator drones that monitor the Pakistan-Afghan border, or indirectly by Pakistani helicopters at Washington's command. Nor is there much dispute over the American motive: to prevent a peace agreement being signed between the Pakistan army and pro-Taliban tribesmen in Bajaur.

Bajaur is a thorn in Pakistan-US relations. Adjacent to Afghanistan's restive Kunar province, it is an entry point and haven for Taliban and al Qaeda guerrillas fighting American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. The madrassa was headed by Maulana Liaquat Ali, a local cleric who, in October 2001, levied 10,000 volunteers to fight alongside the Taliban against the US- led invasion of Afghanistan. Liaquat Ali was killed in the missile strike.

He was also increasingly marginal to Bajaur politics, say locals, due precisely to the enormous losses suffered by the volunteers in Afghanistan. In fact, at the time of the attack, he was negotiating his amnesty with the Pakistani army in return for a pledge to provide neither succour nor sanctuary to foreign fighters, including the Taliban.

"The evening before the strike, Liaquat was preparing a tribal council for the signing ceremony with the government," says analyst Rahimullah Yousefzai. "So why would the Pakistan army authorise an operation that destroys the Pakistan government's main political strategy in the tribal areas?" The answer, he suggests, is because the Americans had called time on the strategy.

The Bajaur agreement was modelled on one signed in September between the government and tribesmen in North Waziristan, another tribal agency on the Pakistani-Afghan border. During recent trips to the US and Europe, Musharraf had sold the pact as a new "holistic" approach to the Taliban and Talibanisation. To defeat these twin evils, Musharraf told Western governments, dialogue and development must be employed, as well as military might which alone had not only failed as a strategy in the tribal areas, but also in Afghanistan. George Bush and Tony Blair gave public backing to the new approach.

NATO commanders in Afghanistan, faced with a resurgent Taliban, were furious however. They had three gripes with the North Waziristan agreement. First, so far from being "anti-Taliban", as Musharraf claimed, it had been negotiated with the express approval of Taliban leaders. As early as May, Mullah Mohammed Omar had instructed his followers in North Waziristan to comply with a ceasefire since fighting the Pakistan army "served (only) the US interest".

The agreement was also skewed, a reflection of how strong the Taliban had become in the tribal areas. Thus in return for verbal pledges by tribesmen not to fight in Afghanistan or harbour foreign militants, the Pakistani government actually released prisoners, removed checkpoints and, astonishingly, returned arms to tribes known for their pro-Taliban and pro-Al Qaeda loyalties.

The verbal pledges have also not been kept. Since the agreement was signed on 5 September, at least four tribesmen have been executed by the Taliban, allegedly for being "American spies". A recent US Congress report, based on testimony from US NATO commanders, records a 300 percent hike in cross border militant infiltration into Afghanistan.

This is why the consensus is so strong in Pakistan that the US and NATO were behind the attack on the madrassa -- both had a clear interest in not allowing Bajaur to go North Waziristan's way. Whether it was American officers or Pakistani pilots "who actually pulled the trigger is of academic interest only," says analyst Aamer Ahmed Khan.

But it is not of academic interest to Musharraf. Ever since September 11, the Pakistani leader has tried to strike a balance between the counter-insurgency demands of his Western allies and the anti- imperialist sentiments of his people. He has managed to walk the tightrope by claiming that submission to US regional policy was in Pakistan's national interest. But it is difficult to see what interest is served by an act that humiliates his army, strengthens the Islamist and Taliban opposition and slaughters his own people. That is why the whisper in Islamabad is that Musharraf -- in Bajaur, on October 30 and in the full glare of his people -- may have finally fallen off the tightrope.

Deals and Differences

Two recent agreements in Pakistan and Afghanistan suggest a new approach with the Taliban. But there are differences between the two pacts

On 5 September, the Pakistani government signed a peace agreement with pro-Taliban tribesmen from its North Waziristan agency on the Afghan border. Five days later, NATO commanders initialled a similar pact with tribesmen from Musa Qala in Afghanistan's Helmand province. The latter this summer was the site of fighting between British soldiers and Taliban guerrillas.

Coincidence? Not exactly, says Mohamed Jan Orakzai, governor of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province and senior government signatory to the Waziristan deal. "I would say [the Musa Qala deal] was inspired by the peace agreement in Waziristan. It was done more or less on the same lines, where agreement was with local elders of the tribe, and maybe some indirect involvement of the Taliban."

The resemblance between the two deals is unmistakeable. The Waziristan agreement followed a three-year hunt for Taliban and Al-Qaeda fugitives by the Pakistan army that left hundreds dead, thousands displaced, and which radicalised a generation of previously loyal tribesmen. The Musa Qala deal came after a summer that has so far seen 3,000 killed in Afghanistan, most of them civilians, and which has left many Afghans from the southern provinces utterly alienated from their latest occupiers. There are other similarities, says Rahimullah Yousafzai, a Pakistani commentator.

"The Pakistan government says the agreement is not with the militants, but with tribal elders. The British NATO forces say we have not talked with the Taliban but only with local tribal elders. Both statements are unbelievable. In both places there are two parties to the conflict. In North Waziristan they are the government and the local militants, or what is known as the Pakistan Taliban. In Helmand they are the British forces and the Taliban. In both cases, the tribal elders served only as intermediaries."

Nearly two months on, the Musa Qala agreement appears to be holding, though last week NATO forces again unleashed aerial bombardments in Afghanistan's Kandahar province that left at least 50 civilians dead, and thousands outraged. Pakistani helicopters strafed a madrasa on 30 October in Bajaur agency on the Afghan border. Army spokesmen said that the school was being used as a training camp by the Taliban, and pro-Al-Qaeda militants, and that 80 "suspected militants" had been killed in the assault. Locals said the carnage included children registering for a new semester.

The North Waziristan agreement seems also to be observed largely in the breach. Since 5 September, at least four men have been executed by the Taliban as "American spies". NATO monitors report a hike in cross- border infiltration into Afghanistan. There is only one area in which the pact seems to be working, says Pakistani commentator Ismail Khan. "There are no [Taliban] attacks on government installations, and the security forces have not carried out any ground and air offensives against the militants."

Therein lay the significance of the deal, sources say. In pursuance of a ceasefire, Pakistan reportedly allowed the senior Taliban commanders, Jalaluddin Haqqani and Mullah Dadullah, to meet with tribal militants in North Waziristan. Haqqani placed them under his control and instructed "all local and foreign [fighters] ... not to fight against Pakistan, because this is in the interest of the US", according to a communiqué posted throughout the agency in May.

Haqqani also instructed his mujahadeen to collect revenues from the people. He appointed emirs to "perform their duties with mutual consultation," a code for establishing a separate, Islamic system of government. The communiqué was issued in the name of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and signed by its "president", Mullah Mohamed Omar. For Afrasiab Khattab, a leader of the Pathan nationalist Awami National Party, this is the most ominous part of the Waziristan deal.

"Over the last few years, the traditional tribal leadership [in Waziristan] has been physically eliminated, and the Taliban filled the vacuum. They had money and guns, both of which are handy for leadership in tribal societies. The only thing they lacked was recognition from the state, which they got from the 5 September agreement. So in return for a ceasefire, the government has planted a new elite leadership in North Waziristan. This is a most dangerous development, not only for Afghanistan, but also Pakistan."

But is this also the thinking that underlies the agreement in Musa Qala? That in return for quiet, the Taliban will be allowed to rule in areas where they command tribal loyalty and popular support, and that they will again be given a seat at the new Afghanistan table?

On 27 October Karzai extended an invitation to Mullah Omar to "come back to [his] own land and talk and negotiate". The Taliban's rejoinder was swift. "There can be no talks with the Afghan puppet government in the presence of foreign occupying forces. Hamid Karzai and his colleagues should first free themselves from the slavery of foreign infidels, and then invite us for negotiations. The Taliban... will continue their armed jihad under Mullah Omar's leadership until the ouster of foreign forces," said Taliban spokesman, Tayyab Agha, on 28 October.

The response should surprise no one, according to analysts. For the peace overtures that are being floated in North Waziristan and, perhaps, Helmand, are predicated on the notion that there is a moderate, Pathan nationalist Taliban struggling for office from under a rigid Islamist exterior. But such a kernel is a chimera, says Rahimullah Yousafzai.

"There is no organised group among the Taliban who could be called moderates. Those who were have either dropped out or defected to the Karzai government. From what I know, 95 per cent of the Taliban support Mullah Mohamed Omar... and they don't want to become part of the Karzai government, even in return for something substantial. They want the power they had before -- Sharia, Islamic law and control of the whole country".