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By Root 1473 0

as a sign that they could extend their control from the tribal areas into the ‘settled areas’ of the NWFP, and further towards Islamabad. Much was made of the fact that Swat had previously been a tourist destination (I was told in August 2009 that I was the first Western tourist to visit the bazaar in Mingora for more than two years), and even, in the 1960s and 1970s, a stop on the ‘hippy trail’. All of this was rather misleading. Swat has a very specific history, different alike from the tribal areas and from the rest of the NWFP. The Islamists’ takeover was not a question of the ‘Taleban’ moving into Swat from outside, but of an overwhelmingly local movement which, while it placed itself under the name and banner of the Pakistani Taleban, remained completely autonomous.

Key to understanding the militants’ temporary success in Swat are three factors: a tradition of Islamist militancy in the region stretching back to the mid-nineteenth century; the nature of the princely state of Swat, which retained a semi-independence until 1969; and the way in which Swat was incorporated into Pakistan.

Despite social change in recent decades, Swat remains to a considerable extent a tribal society in which the Yusufzai Pathans dominate. As elsewhere in the Pathan lands, religious figures have wielded great authority. The Akhund of Swat (1794 – 1877) in the mid-nineteenth century was followed by the remarkable religious dynasty of the Mianguls, who for the first time created stable monarchical rule over the Swat valley. The British accepted and backed the Mianguls as rulers, partly because they were effective in crushing or expelling Islamist extremists (the ‘Hindustan fanatics’ or ‘Mujahidin’) who wished to use Swat as a base to carry out jihad against the British. Pakistan inherited the British protectorate, but in 1969 (twenty years after India had abolished its princely states), princely rule was ended and Swat was incorporated into Pakistan.

The law the princes exercised was based on a mixture of local tribal custom and the Shariah called rivaj, but – especially under the last prince (or Wali), Jehanzeb – they also created an autocratic but enlightened government which did a great deal to bring education and economic development to Swat. The small size of the population meant that the Walis could hand out judicial and administrative decisions directly to much of the population.

Justice was be Dalila, be Wakila au be Apela (without argument, without advocate, and without appeal) but was quick, cheap, transparent, generally fair, and above all in accordance with the local people’s own conceptions of justice. In a telling comment, Behrouz Khan, a native of Swat and correspondent for Geo TV in Peshawar, described the last Wali as ‘basically a kind of aristocratic Mangal Bagh’ (in a reference to the Islamist warlord mentioned in the last chapter) – dealing out autocratic, ruthless but popular justice leavened with humour.9

It is a very depressing comment on the quality of the Pakistani governmental, political and legal systems that every single person with whom I spoke in Swat – every single one, including Pakistani officials and officers – said that Swat had been better run under the last Wali, and that, in particular, the administration of justice had been far superior. As an army major (not a Swati) told me:

The merger of 1969 had a very bad effect on Swat. The Wali ruled with justice and fair play. He guaranteed all the amenities of life for the people. But from 1969 to the present, every Pakistani government has failed to administer justice and meet the needs and the aspirations of the people. So older people in Swat used to tell their sons and daughters how much better things had been before.

This deep public respect for the Wali’s memory led the Taleban to spare the homes of the old royal family in Saidu Sharif, despite their hatred for the landowning class in general. A certain Pathan nationalist element was also present in the nostalgia for independent Swat. It had been a Pathan state under Pathan princes, using the Pashto