Pukhtoon Views Taliban phenomenon

This article is taken from a Anonymous Pakhtoon
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I have been reading the comments by a lot people about what is commonly called the Taliban phenomenon on another website.

The persons who make these comments remind me of a village compounder talking about doing brain surgery to remove a brain tumor and pretending to be a brain
surgeon. Perhaps to be quite honest about it, even though most of the commentators have very good intentions for the welfare of Pakistan and I hope of
Afghanistan , I doubt if they spend the time to study and understand the alien culture that they are commenting on.

Being from the area NWFP and having been inclined to study any subject in depth
before making any comments, it has been quite difficult to read some of the
comments made by those that frequent the web site .... Since there
was a lot of talk about the bad law and order situation without anyone having
had first hand experience either in the locality NWFP or more important having
been directly or indirectly involved on a personal level in an incident which
resulted from the deteriorating law and order situation.

Under normal circumstances I am reluctant to talk about myself or about my family but the articles and comments by many viewers simply forced me to try to bring one
man´s experience (on the ground) into this discussion. I disclosed the incident that has affected my family and tried to discuss at length the dynamics of the problems faced by the people of the NWFP.

For those who do not know me and most of you do not, I am 60 years old and in addition to my profession I am student of history, of political movements in history and of military history in addition to history of revolutions. In the past 35 years or
so let me say this that I have had the opportunity to be involved with the
political players of the highest level both in Pakistan and Afghanistan primarily because of family contacts. This started right after the Zia took over, during the Zia regime´s tenure and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Also during the Benazir Bhutto´s two stints as PM and during the last Nawaz Shareef tenure as PM and during the first 4 years of the Musharraf regime. I say this because I wish for everyone to know that I am not talking simply just because I have an opinion but am quite familiar with the goings on for quite sometime in the town called Islamabad .

I have been given an opportunity by another website .... to share my thoughts based on my
experiences and I am very grateful to them for letting me have a forum to share
my thoughts. So here it is and if at times it seems long winded, please excuse me.

The Kidnapping Event:

One evening my brother was returning from work (Peshawar ) late in his car and it was stopped by another car, which blocked the road. There were 3 people, one of whom was a Police sergeant. They threw him into their car after pistol-whipping him on his head. One of them sat on him. They drove around for a while and then he was
taken to a very fashionable neighborhood of Mardan. He was kept chained to the
floor of a room with handcuffs and shackles. He was beaten often. He was kept
in incarcerated for 11 days and was released after the payment of ransom. He
was given water only twice a day and fed only once a day. He slept without a
blanket in the winter of Peshawar area. The family was shattered and no one could sleep. Everyone was angry, upset and frustrated and helpless. It took 3 days before the kidnappers contacted the family and asked for the ransom.

In about 4 days after the kidnapping the Police and the Intelligence people had located the place where the victim was being kept and they wanted to go and grab him SWAT style. The family opposed that as the security of the victim was their
first priority and the continued negotiations finally bore fruit and my brother
was released. Immediately after that the Police moved in and was able to arrest
5 of the 7 kidnappers including the Police sergeant. Brother had lost about 40
lbs, having been reduced to a mere skeleton. Just to see him in that condition
brought the emotions of intense hatred and the Pushtoon´s desire for revenge. Nutrition restoration was the first order of business and then how do you go about making sure that the newly released victim can sleep and not continue to have nightmares. Well, you can´t and the victim has to go through the process himself and all you can do is provide an atmosphere of love and affection and let the biology takes it´s course at it´s own pace. Just take the simple act of going to the bazaar to buy vegetables. You do not let brother drive. While on the road anytime a car stops in front or turns,he would become agitated. His son would not understand that and that bothered him a great deal. Are you hungry, his wife would ask and his reaction would be agitation since his life for 12 days of the kidnapping was being run by someone else and this simple question would create a feeling of being pushed.

Simple an event as opening the door makes you nervous as to who is there since that is what you worried about when you were in captivity. Being in captivity for 12
days has worst of both situations. You have not been long enough in captivity
to have had time to adjust to your surroundings and when you are freed now you
have to adjust to your "NEW" surroundings. The Pushtoon tradition of " TA POS" created it´s own difficulties. Lots of relatives and friends came to visit and for everyone brother had to recite the events umpteen times and answer their questions ad infinitum. I can go on and on but I will stop here with a final comment. Everyone has his or her breaking point but before you reach that what happens to you leaves a mark on you and that mark is forever. In brother´s case, he could not handle it and has left for another country for sometime to restore his nerves to what they were before this event.

The Kidnapping Business:

Now a kidnapping is a very complex event as it affects many different type of people.
The willing participants are the kidnappers and the victim and his families are
unwilling participants. The Police come in only after the event takes place.
This happened in Peshawar which as you might know is a army headquarter and a Frontier Force headquarter.
A kidnapping creates substantial pressures on everyone and it does not end when
the victim returns home to be with his dear ones. But let us examine what are
the dynamics of the rampant kidnapping that are going on in our area. We
learned that kidnapping is a far more sophisticated business than most people
believe it to be. The kidnappers told my brother that they had been watching
his movements for 4 months. There is a small town in Malakand Agency near Swat
called Sakha KOTE. This town is the WALL STREET of Kidnapping business where the victims are traded like stocks and shares between various parties and this in fact is
used by the original kidnappers both as leverage against the family and also to
reduce the risk of being caught and held accountable once that happens.

For example an individual is kidnapped and then he is transferred to another
group who takes him somewhere else and so on. The newest party wants more money and is more threatening to the family members.

If some of you might remember the ambassador of Pakistan to Afghanistan
was kidnapped in the Khyber agency. When he was finally freed, he was from
Waziristan . Well, the original kidnappers "SOLD" him to certain parties, which need to have him so that they could obtain the release of their people in return.

So there is an active trade going on where the criminals are only one part and other
forces are the other part. Now when did this start- well in 2001 September after the 9/11 attacks. Kidnapping for ransom was a rare occurrence before that since if you kidnapped someone´s family member, that will start a blood feud and the tribe of the victim will come after the kidnappers with everything they have to take revenge. No one wanted that until and unless they were willing to take that risk and most people were not willing to take that risk.

But the Americans, the British and the intelligence agencies of Pakistan used this same technique (and the same people) to try to get hold of a lot of people to
satisfy the need for the Americans to have " Terrorists" arrested. Substantial amounts of money were paid out and thus it became a way of making money.

The Musharraf regime itself indulged in this activity as they have themselves
confessed many times. Well once the matter became well known and it did become
well known then others who having had no success finding jobs, became active
kidnappers as they wanted to make money by getting their people and so the
business of kidnapping prospered and right now it is booming.

But kidnapping and killing is also booming in Karachi and has been there for sometime and crime is becoming rampant in the bigger cities of Pakistan like
Lahore and I have missed all the hue and cry about having the military carry out an
"operation" there. But I shall leave this part of my story and try to look into why we have the problems that we have today in the NWFP.

Problems in FATA and NWFP:

The people of FATA and NWFP are like anybody else peace loving and law abiding.
They are decent and honest people. Their word means a lot that is how business
is conducted in all spheres of life. The whole world knows that.

Just go to any place in India or the Middle East and everyone trusts a "PATHAN".

But unlike people of other parts of the country they do not take very kindly to
injustice and/ abuse. It is their nature or better it is in their genes. The history of the past 2000 plus years shows that beyond any question. There is a lot of nonsense that is thrown around in regards to the problems we have today in FATA and the Pushtoon belt of Afghanistan .

For those that do not know, the Pushtoons are one people who ruled the Indian sub
continent for a few years before the Mughals came. The country today known as
Afghanistan was created by the Pushtoons. The word Afghan means a Pushtoon. When Ahmad Shah Durrani made Afghanistan, he brought a lot of non-pushtoons under the rule including Tajiks, Uzbeks, etc etc. Remember, Peshawer was the WINTER CAPITAL of the Afghan Kings and seat of their government. Once the British defeated the Sikhs, they came all the way up to and beyond the Indus River into the
Pushtoon´s heartland, which today you call Frontier. A de-facto boundary was created called the Durand Line which divided the tribes and the families of the Pushtoons and this one fact is critical to the understanding of what is going on to-day.

A well read Pushtoon knows and understands this fact while a Punjabi or a Sindhi or a person from Karachi does not and I might say cannot. The Baloch alone nderstand this as they have been divided also and have a tribal social structure and similar code of honour etc.

So the people who live in the NWFP and those that live in Eastern and Southeastern
Afghanistan are the same- they eat the same food, they speak the same language,
their social mannerisms are the same and so on.

After the defeat of the Soviet army, considerable conflict developed between the various factions with no power for the central govt. Law and order problems developed everywhere and war lordism became the norm. Most of the War Lords were corrupt people and the common villager became fed up with the situation, which was getting worse every day. But the Pushtoon people could get no relief from the Tajik dominated Govt in Kabul. So in a desperate situation they chose the only help that was available to them - they fell back on their own time-tested system of Pushtoonvali and the Islamic Sharia. The place that this happened was in Kandhar and a specific event is what brought the avalanche into play.

Origin of Taliban Movement:

A young boy was kidnapped by a warlord and sexually abused and kept in incarceration. The father of the child, a villager went to his Mullah at the mosque who happened to be Mullah Umer and asked for help. Mullah Umer got together some of his madrassah students and since every Pushtoon is armed, they went and got the War Lord and his henchmen and after killing them hanged them on the poles on the road for a time so that everyone would know what treatment would be meted
out to anyone who went against the laws of Islam. Please understand that the
situation would not have arisen had there been relief available to the victims.
There was none and the matter was dealt with the code of Pushtoonwali and
Islamic Sharia .

Now a lot of people in Pakistan , The West and in Afghanistan say that the Taliban was a movement created by the ISI.

For those who know the Pushtoon character will agree with me when I say the following - NO ONE and I mean NO ONE can make or create a movement like the Taliban. If that was possible then the Americans have a lot more money and why
haven´t they been able to create anything like that. The ISI creation theory is utter rubbish and has no basis in fact. It is of course great fiction. The sources, which subscribe to this hypothesis, belong to the school of thought that you discredit and question the legitimacy of your adversary.

Since the Tajiks and Hazaras and Uzbeks could not fight successfully against
the Taliban movement, and they found them to be a formidable adversary, well
they indulged in the typical racist propaganda in a very organised and effective fashion (sort of like the Kuwaitis who did the same to get the Americans to invade Iraq in 1990 s ) that the Pushtoons by themselves are not that capable and the reason they are succeeding is because of the support from the ISI and Pakistan. Yes, Pakistan did support them but it was the marriage of convenience and the fact that a
large number of Pushtoon also live in Pakistan .

Absence of Justice System:

What have the Taliban provided to the people of FATA and adjacent portions of
Afghanistan .They have provided a system of justice, no matter how cruel, they have PROVIDED a SYSTEM where no system remained after the Soviet withdrawal. They have provided cheap and swift justice. They have tried to, I said tried to get rid
of the moral evils that have invaded their society. Why do they prevent the Barber from shaving beards. Because the Prophet (PBUH) decreed that.

Why do they burn the CD´s shops. Because the CDs shops sell pornographic videos
and CDs. In addition to the other stuff and become centers of heroin distribution.

Why do they kill the people who they label as spies for the West, you ask. Well after
what the Western forces have done to them and are continuing to do to them
everyday, what would you do? You are already asking for Musharraf to be hanged
so before commenting on the Taliban, see what you see in the mirror.

They help resolve disputes according to Islamic Law. They do not allow the women to go around semi-naked as they do in Lahore and Islamabad . Well, it is THEIR homeland.

They oppose Musharraf because he sold out and has tried to put in place whatever
would please the Western Forces. The Taliban were never a cultured and
sophisticated movement because most of the Talibs come from the poor background
and this is not a great shock to anyone. BUT they DID restore law and order in
Afghanistan and they did substantially reduce the cultivation of Opium.

BBC Link

	Code:
	http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3408353.stm

They got a lot of the money from the Saudis who obviously wanted to promote their own Wahabi version of Islam just like they have been doing In Pakistan. And they
got some money from Pakistan and believe it from others too. To those with very short selective memories, the Taliban leaders were invited to the USA where discussions about the oil and gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan
and Pakistan to India were discussed in addition to other topics.

Fast forward to September 11th 2001. The Americans want Bin Ladin and demand that Mullah Umer give him to them. The messenger was Lt. Gen. Mehmood of the ISI of Pakistan Army at the behest of General Musharraf and his advisors.

Facing a threat of utter destruction from the sole super power, Mullah Umer refused
because a Pushtoon NEVER goes back on his word when he has given asylum to
anyone. For those who have been yapping vitriol against the Taliban, I would like to quote a famous American Civil Rights Advocate named Martin Luther King
Jr. who said it very well indeed:

"Cowardice asks the question, `Is it safe?´

Expediency asks the question, `Is it politic?´

Vanity asks the question, `Is it popular?´

But, conscience asks the question, `Is it right?´

And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one´s conscience tells one that
it is right."

And the Pushtoons believe that what Mullah Umer did was the right thing.

Chief Kidnapper of Pakhtoons: General Musharraf

And what did the leader of the secularists do in Pakistan ; he of the slogan of
"enlightened moderation" played it safe by selling his country and by renting his army for peanuts. He provided Air Force and military bases for the West so that they could attack the Pushtoons of Afghanistan with ease and at any time of their choosing. He supplied petrol and diesel and food to the killers of the Pushtoons. The political elite of Pakistan happily went along and made money while providing the help. He grabbed a lot innocent people and sold them to the Americans as terrorists. He even sold the ambassador of Afghanistan to the Americans even though under
any and all international law Pakistan was supposed to guard the ambassador against such treatment, which consisted of beatings and torture before being sent to Guantanamo Bay Concentration Camp.

This where the problem lies. Gen. Musharraf with his nuclear weapons and a 700,000
strong army did not even question as to what was good or bad for Pakistan and after an 8 minute phone call caved in and accepted the USA as his overlord. Having access to the highest levels of the Govt. at that time I am ashamed to tell you that he had the support of all of the bureaucracy and some of the army. There were people in the armed forces that resisted but they were pushed aside. Gen. Musharraf DID NOT ask the Pushtoons what is best because he had become an American Agent and their viceroy. Over 300,000 Pushtoon civilians have died since the American invasion. They kill anyone they want and the label Taliban is stuck onto them. No questions. No Inquiry. The Musharraf Government became the chief kidnapper of Afghan Pushtoons and their own people and handed them over to the Western forces.

I did not see or hear of any protest marches in Islamabad or Karachi or Lahore
or Multan about those innocent Pushtoon people. At that time there was no Hamid MIr questioning as to why this was being carried out. The students of the Universities did not utter a pipsqueak. It seemed that the entire country had been transformed into a gathering of sheep and mice.

The political opportunists like Fazlur Rehman played on the Pushtoon´s feelings and came to power as a result of that but once in power they played by the Zardari rules of current situation.

Where were the so-called People´s representatives?

Did Benazir Bhutto utter one word about the killings?

We do not know if Nawaz Sharif did as he was in Saudi Arabia from where we did not
get any info at that time.

The Only person who has been consistent about this has been Imran Khan but then he is Pushtoon even though he does not speak Pushto.

Using the above as background and taking into account the nature of the Pushtoon people when it comes to INJUSTICE and Revenge let us examine the situation today as we speak.

- We have no law and order NOT because the Taliban are ruling the country because they are not.

- We have no Law and Order because the rulers have no legitimacy.

-Musharraf has no legitimacy because of his record of 8 plus years.

- The Police is and has always been corrupt and the justice system has broken down
totally.

Imagine if possible if you live in Pishta Khara, a village outside Peshawar . Just like in
Karachi , the criminal are loose and they kidnap your daughter. The Police do not register an FIR. What do you do? You cannot go after the kidnappers, as they are too strong. Well you go to the local religious person in the mosque and he will refer you to religious people who will help and they will help you get your daughter back plus help you take revenge. Now when you have NO LAW and ORDER and the top man of the country flaunts the law in the face of everyone, well you got get something done and that is why Mangal Bagh is the most popular person in Bara and Khyber Agency.
All of those who pretend to be holier than thou and pontificate about human rights and due process of law, please be advised that a little honesty and sincerity is in order. Look, you Westoxicated people, the Pushtoon society does not have the luxury of your western due process of law and equal justice, we have been abandoned and we have come up with our own system to solve our issues (maybe difficult for others to understand) and until such a time when justice prevails for everyone, stop telling us what to do what not to do.

Neglected Pakhtoons:

Now about the Pushtoons who strenuously object to the Taliban phenomenon and there are quite a few. They wish to protect their way of life, as they know it. They are well to do, well educated; many of them are landowners and industrialists.
Their thinking is liberal and they like the western way of life. They have forgotten that the world around them has changed. The poor and the downtrodden have discovered the philosophy, which will liberate them. And that philosophy is old Pushtoonwali and Islamic Sharia.

It is true that there are people in the Frontier who would like to have Islamic Sharia as the law of their land. It used to be the case before Pakistan as the British allowed the people in the area (FATA) to run their lives according to their own rules.

Swat, the Switzerland of Pakistan was a peaceful place where anyone could travel at night or day without any concern for his or her safety. That was when the Pushtoons
(Wali Sahib) ruled the state according to Islamic Sharia and Pushtoon Wali.

Well, the same people who are the worst critics of Taliban today, had their version of
rule of the people brought under the fascist regime of ZAB. The Wali of Swat was removed and Swat became just like any place in Pakistan with the replacement of a
working justice system with a corrupt system that everyone is familiar with.
The roads are bad and broken down, and guess what, there is no Law and Order.
The local Pushtoon population wants to go back to their old system where they
could resolve their problems in weeks if not days. The Musharraf regime and now
the Pseudo Musharraf regime of NRO does not want that. They have tried through
the legal means but that has not been allowed to work. The youths, who are always impatient, have decided to force the issue by trying to take over the job, which the police and other Govt. Agencies are not doing.

On this web site a great many people have complained about the inhuman treatment dished out to some people recently in Swat and Waziristan etc. It is the same
characters who day in day out want to HANG Musharraf -( I suppose they want to
do a HUMANE Hanging)- Do these very people know what a Mob does and what a Mob psychology is and how fast it develops. Could anyone been able to stop the
burning of the Dacoits in Karachi ?

Allow me to ask where were these people when the Western forces were killing and maiming the Afghan Pushtoons in Afghanistan ,and the Pakistani Pushtoons in Waziristan and Bajaur. Where were their humane voices when the Lal Masjid was attacked?

Ok- let me get this right. It is humane to kill 80 students (Talibs in Damadola) with
Hellfire Missiles or 500-pound bombs but when the throat of a spy is slit, it is inhumane.

The purpose of presenting this long list of complaints is to show the magnitude and
intensity of the feeling amongst the Pushtoons against those who wish to continue the status quo ante. Pushtoons do not wish to have the moral corruption, which is the new big business. They do not want their sons and daughters to be third-rate clones of the West like those in the rest of the country. A separate article could be written on this topic.

So some but not all Pushtoons have decided that they are not going to take it anymore. They wish to enforce the Islamic Laws and want to be governed by these laws. They are the poor and mostly rural whose family members have suffered from
enlightened moderation. The others who are well to do but feel an affinity with the suffering of their brethren on both sides of the border which to them is artificial and man made The others like me understand their fury and are trying to know how to help them deal with this problematic issue.

Anyone who labels this desire of a large group of people for political cultural emancipation as old and pre-historic is living in La La land. No one can wish away this nation of the Pushtoons. They are here and they want what belongs to them. Learn from history. Ask the Russians and now ask the Americans. Better still ask those who know them .The only way to resolve this issue is to let those people deal with them who understand them, their culture and way of thinking. Simply, that means other Pushtoons.

The kidnapping in our family, at least in my case, has brought home the need for an
economic and social justice as the primary requisite to have law and order and
peace. When the government fails in a moral and ethical sense as it has in NWFP
for sure, (Thanks to Musharraf regime) the people WILL take law into their own
hands. Making political slogans either by politicians or those who comment on this web site might make you feel important and better but it will do nothing to alleviate the illness. Everyone opposing Taliban and Pakhtoons do not have a solution for solving this problem. His or her solution is military operation.

I ask all of them, are you more powerful than the Soviet Army which stayed for 10 years and failed and are you as powerful as the Americans with their daisy cutters
and Predators firing the hell fire missiles. And how long are you willing to continue your operation: 100 years, 200 years or 300 years. You cannot kill all the Pushtoons and even if you do, there will be a woman left who will give birth to a child and will teach him what you did to his ancestors and he will teach his kids and so on and then they will come after you.

Those who propose military action as a solution keep in mind the recent history and I
will only mention two names.

1- Indira Gandhi and her military action against the Sikhs in Amritsar .

2- Gen Dyer and his operation in Jalianwala Bagh. Remember, those were Sikhs!

To resist injustice is a human virtue. This sense is much more intense amongst the
Pushtoons than amongst other people. So the only solution, if there is a solution, is a dialogue and discussion with the Pushtoon wali and Islamic Sharia as basis of discussion. [/quote]

Thank you for your patience and perseverance for taking the time to read expression of feelings of one Pushtoon.

I do support the analysis of the writer & the root cause of what is happening in our areas.Not because I am Pashtoon myself but due to our own experiences of political failure & few families enjoying the entire resources of Pakistan whereas the majority of the Masses are suffering from powerty,deprived of their bsic rights & needs.It is not only the story of alone N.W.F.P in every part of the Pakistan these Khan,s,Waderras,Sardars & chowdris are exploiting the majority.Brittishers left this country but left behind those black "Angrez" who have served Brittishers mostly out of ways even to betray their own people.Pakistan was createdon the Idealogy of Islam where Muslims should enjoy all kind of a Independence & Equality,in the meantime as ordered by Islam all the religious minorities should enjoys their freedom & liberty as well.Most of us were betrayed although we Pashtoons & Baloch have join Pakistan on our own will,whereas most of other people have migrated to this idealogical country for the better future & freedom for the Muslims.Lack of justice political system & the allocation of wealth & resources has destroyed our dreams.Gap between richest & poorest have brought the country at the verge of revolution,how long a small majority will exploit the majority.If we would be indeed a poor country without any resources coul live with it but infact it is one of the richest country if we think 60 years long establishment,traitors & socalled polititions have plundered,lootered & embazled the most of the resources & wealth & tried their best to dig deep into its roots to destroy it but still (May be with the grace Of Allah Or prayers of many) this country against the wish & will of those tried to fullfill the wishes of our enemies.We do not suport Talibanisation or mob rule but in the meantime we are not ready to be exploited by these so called polititions safeguarding their personal benefits,interests & those want to colonise this country indirectly.Every suppressed Pakistani have gathered under the unbrella of Talibaans & other rebellions from which enemies agents,criminals,intruders & Islam enemies profiting in many ways.It is a kind of escape for those not getting justice & deprived of their basic rights by the non existence of justice political system.We should avoid worshiping personalities,given chances to corrupt ones & seek for the better people & developing a better political system.No one like to burn his own house or by killing own people it is mostly a protest against the unjustice of the society & political system.We have to give them a alternative & curb our real enemy exploiting & profitting from our internal disputes.