Quotes of the Day
The transformation was radical. In the village of Matta, the police post sported a new sign: "Taliban Station." So did the precinct in Kabal. In Kalam village, Dr. Fazli Raziq's barber disappeared, driven out of business by a new edict prohibiting men from shaving their beards. Fazli's wife, Zaibi, stopped leaving the house, preferring to stay inside rather than replace her headscarf with the freshly mandated shuttlecock burqa that left only a mesh opening for the eyes. Then militants threatened to bomb their daughter's school. All in all, five out of seven subdistricts — some 68 villages — in this picturesque valley 100 miles (160 km) from the capital are under the control of an extremist group that has torched music shops, beheaded policemen and tried to blow up centuries-old Buddhist monuments.
No, this is not Afghanistan. It is the Swat Valley, Pakistan's biggest tourist destination, home to the country's only ski slope and a haven for trout-fishing. Its people are deeply conservative Muslims, yet highly tolerant of the liberal ways of international visitors. In recent months, however, Swat has changed. Maulana Fazlullah, a fundamentalist preacher known as the "FM Mullah" for his daily radio sermons, has launched a campaign for the establishment of Islamic law, or Shari'a, in the valley. Fazlullah is backed by Pakistani extremists who share an Islamist ideology with the Afghan Taliban next door. These militants have unleashed a wave of violence on Swat that has claimed nearly 300 lives, mostly security personnel, and that has driven nearly half a million residents from their homes. "Swat used to be a paradise," says Zaibi Raziq. "I used to go on walks every day with my family and friends. But we stopped going out; we stayed inside, discussing what might happen next." The next time she left her home, it was for good. On Oct. 29 Zaibi and her family fled Kalam, leaving a TV, a computer and all their furniture behind.
When Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf, declared emergency rule on Nov. 3, he cited the threat of Swat's mounting insurgency as justification. But, so far, Musharraf has used his emergency powers mainly to jail opponents and journalists, and to oust the Supreme Court judges who were about to pronounce his recent re-election as President unconstitutional. (On Nov. 19, a newly reconstituted Supreme Court comprising Musharraf loyalists decreed his re-election lawful.) While the government concentrates on putting out opposition rallies in the capital Islamabad, extremist wildfires are erupting across the land. Since the imposition of emergency rule, the violence has actually gotten worse: sectarian strife on the Afghan border has claimed more than 100 lives, and at least four police and eight frontier-corps soldiers have been beheaded in Swat. "Musharraf's emergency was just a pretext," says Shah Jehan, director of the Institute of Management Studies at Peshawar University. "If he really wanted to do something [about terrorism] he would have pulled the plug on the FM Mullah. Instead, things are getting worse."
Radicalism has been on the rise for several years in Pakistan. Many members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, fleeing the U.S. assault on their bases in Afghanistan, have taken advantage of the porous border between the countries to regroup in the remote, mountainous tribal areas of Waziristan. But Swat is different. The virtual takeover by extremists of a populous, settled area so close to Islamabad marks a significant advance in local militancy. "Swat is a symbol," says a Western military official based in Islamabad. "Mullah Fazlullah's influence is spreading — it doesn't look good."
Fazlullah, a 34-year-old cleric who once earned a living ferrying passengers and goods across the Swat River, got his start studying under Maulana Sufi Mohammed, a religious teacher who founded the Tehrik Nifaz Shariat-e-Muhammadi (Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law) in the 1990s. In 2002 the organization was banned, and Mohammed was thrown in jail for mobilizing thousands of his followers to fight American forces in Afghanistan. Fazlullah, who by then was Mohammed's son-in-law, also went to Afghanistan to fight. Radicalized by the experience, and by his short stint in an Afghan jail, he returned to continue the campaign for Shari'a using the platform of his popular radio show. "He is a very good speaker," says Zaibi Raziq. "He gets the attention of a lot of people." In a region plagued by corruption and government inefficiency, Fazlullah's demand for rule of law — even Islamic law — struck a chord. "Many of his listeners were poor and illiterate," says Rahmat Ali Khan, a businessman from Matta who fled after his cousin, a police officer, was beheaded by Fazlullah's militants on Oct. 27. "They suffer under rich landlords who give them no rights. They think that if they follow [Fazlullah] they will be able to occupy their own lands, under Shari'a."
Eventually, Fazlullah's didactic sermons started to alienate many of Swat's residents, but by then it was too late — his militia had already established a foothold. Khan, the businessman from Matta, was sent threatening letters after he denounced Fazlullah's men for killing his cousin. "They have spies everywhere," he says. For too long, the central government ignored the problems festering in Swat, concerned that a crackdown on demands for Shari'a would alienate the country's Islam-based political parties. By the time the military tried to intervene, a homegrown insurgency was in full swing. Fazlullah equated resistance to the government with an anti-American jihad that had already gained some support among Swat's Pashtuns, who belong to same ethnic group as Afghanistan's Taliban. The high incidence of civilian casualties from early bombing raids targeting extremist strongholds further alienated the populace. "The people want the militancy to stop," says Adnan Aurangzeb, a former MP and the grandson of Swat's last princely ruler. "The militants have stopped tourism and disrupted their lives, but the government doesn't have the people's sympathy either."
Earlier attempts to secure Swat resulted in failure. General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of military operations, says bands of militants as small as eight or nine have been able to take over entire villages. Local security forces often flee when faced with an insurgent onslaught. "If they stand up to fight, they know the gangsters will call in their 50 friends," says Pasha. Pakistan's military — which came of age fighting conventional wars with archrival India — never developed the expertise to tackle domestic insurgencies. The frontier corps, says the Western military official, is undertrained and outgunned. He puts himself in the soldier's boots: "I'm making $20 a month, I've got five bullets in my gun, and a couple of guys with AK-47s come up. I mean the question is, Do I want to die? Oh, and by the way, they know all my family."
The military says it's fighting back. This past week the army command sent in 15,000 regular army troops, helicopters, tanks and armored vehicles to battle Fazlullah's ragtag band of some 500 militants. The goal is to push them back into their mountain redoubts where the winter snows might keep them out of the way long enough to secure low-lying villages. When the fighting is over, says Fazli Raziq, he will return. But his wife Zaibi feels the violence will not end: "I know in my heart that there will never be peace." For her, and for many other Swat villagers, their valley is forever lost.
- Aryn Baker/Peshawar