Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [234]
However, the reputation of the MMA alliance both in the West and with officials in Pakistan was deeply tarnished by its murky relations with the radicals who later went on to found the Pakistani Taleban, and by its ambiguous attitude to jihad within Pakistan. In 2007 the alliance split over this issue, with the JUI condemning the radicals who took over the Red Mosque complex in Islamabad, while the Jamaat Islami supported them (see next chapter). However, the JUI retained close private links to some of the Taleban, who supposedly helped Fazl-ur-Rehman in the February 2008 election campaign, even as other Taleban rejected the electoral process altogether. On the other hand, the JUI was tainted in the eyes of more-radical Muslims, and indeed of much of the population in general, by its continued association with Musharraf – thereby ending up with the worst of all worlds.
In August 2008, after they had been defeated in the elections, the information secretary of the JUI, Abdul Jalil Jan, came to drink tea with me in my guest-house in University Town, Peshawar. Echoing the words of many people in the NWFP (including voters for the ANP and PPP), he asked me:
Why have Beitullah Mahsud and Fazlullah declared war on the Pakistani government and army? Wouldn’t you do so if someone invaded your territory and killed your women and children? It doesn’t matter if it is the US or Pakistan who have done the killing. They have been attacked ... So we support talks aimed at peace. The previous peace negotiations were a success, but then they were violated, and by whom? By the government and army on the orders of America. If there is to be peace, then the government must stick to the terms of peace and not launch new attacks ... As to Afghanistan, that is the Afghans’ own business, but naturally people here have strong feelings about what is happening and what the US is doing there. After all, like many people here, I am an Afghan Pashtun myself by origin: my ancestors came here long ago from Kunar.11
Within the NWFP, both the JUI and JI thus opposed any strong action against the radicals who gained an increasing grip on Swat during the MMA period in government. Indeed, many of the Swat radicals had previously been Jamaat cadres and retained close links to the party. The MMA parties did not favour the more brutal and retrograde actions of these forces (including attacks on police, vigilante executions and floggings, and the burning down of girls’ schools) but seem to have found it impossible publicly to take action against groups claiming to act in the name of the Shariah and the Afghan jihad. This inaction on the part of the MMA, and the failure of the JUI and MMA government to consolidate their support, helped open the way for the rise of the Taleban among the Pathans of the Frontier.
Meanwhile, JUI links to hated governments in Islamabad were also losing it local support. In 2008 I heard this about the party in the context of its support for Musharraf. Even a few days before Musharraf’s resignation, both the Fazl-ur-Rehman and Sami-ul-Haq wings of the party were still very hesitant about supporting his impeachment, as Sami-ul-Haq himself told me in August 2008 – using as his excuse that ‘if Musharraf should be impeached, then so should many of the other politicians. All have committed crimes.’
By 2009, ordinary people in Peshawar were cursing the party’s membership of the government of the hated Zardari. It is highly questionable, therefore, whether the patronage extracted by the party really compensates any more for this growth in unpopularity. The JUI’s alliance with Pakistani national parties and aspirations to share power in Islamabad, either for patronage or to change the Pakistani system,