Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [274]
The other incident that caused great disgust was the TNSM/Taleban’s treatment of Pir Samiullah. He was a leading hereditary religious figure from the Barelvi tradition and guardian of his family shrine at Mangal Dagh, and had led local opposition to the Taleban. It was not the fact that the TNSM/Taleban killed him that caused the disgust, but the fact that they later dug up his body, hung it in public for three days, and then blew it up with explosives, scattering bits for hundreds of yards – in order to shatter the mystique attached to the body of a pir. ‘To kill your enemy is one thing,’ I was told by local people, ‘but to desecrate his body, that is not Muslim and not Pashtun.’
On the other hand, quite contrary to government propaganda, sympathy for the Taleban had by no means evaporated altogether. A majority of those I spoke with in the Jalozai IDP camp near Peshawar, albeit a small one, still blamed the army and the Taleban equally for the violence and destruction that had taken place, and said that the government should still try to make peace with the Taleban. ‘In the end, this is all America’s doing,’ an old man said. ‘They have brought this war to Pakistan.’
This impression was confirmed by a local schoolteacher to whom we gave a lift on the way to Swat from Ambela. He said that when the TNSM first appeared, the vast majority of the local population supported them, but that most had changed their minds as a result of their fanaticism and when it became apparent that they wanted power for themselves. Still, he said that 15 – 20 per cent of people continued to support them, and this estimate was backed in private by officers and local journalists with whom I talked.
MINGORA TO DOROSHKHEL
Some of the reasons why a good many local people blame the army and the TNSM/Taleban equally became apparent on a drive up the Swat valley from Mingora to the village of Doroshkhel near Matta about a third of the way up the valley, where I went to see a local ANP leader, Afzal Khan Lalla. Along the way, we passed numerous destroyed buildings, some on their own, others clustered together where battles had been taking place.
As we went, my guide gave me a running commentary:
That building there was a hotel owned by an ANP politician. The Taleban burned it last year ... That was a Taleban madrasah which the army destroyed ... Those houses over there were destroyed by shelling when the army attacked in June ... That used to be a girls’ school which the Taleban destroyed ... Those shops over there were owned by a Taleban sympathizer. The army blew them up last month ...
I began to see the differences between houses destroyed from above by bombs or shellfire and those blown up from below by explosives.
Major Tahir told me candidly:
We have demolished more than 400 houses belonging to Taleban members. Destroying houses in this way is an old punishment among Pashtuns. And seeing their homes demolished, local people are encouraged. They see that this time we are really serious about fighting the Taleban.11
No doubt this is true, but it is also easy to see how an ordinary inhabitant of the Swat valley might feel that his or her neighbourhood was suffering equally from the two sides and call a plague on both their houses. In addition, according to a solidly researched report of Human Rights Watch published in July 2010, the army in Swat has been carrying out a very considerable number of extra-judicial executions of captured Taleban and suspected Taleban supporters. Human Rights Watch said it had firm evidence of 50 such killings, and had been told of 238 in all.12
The widespread use of extra-judicial executions was confirmed for me in an off-hand way by Afzal Khan. Immediately after my interview with him, he went to sit in a jirga with elders from the nearby Sakha side-valley. They were trying through Afzal Khan to negotiate the surrender of the local Taleban commander in their valley, named