Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [93]
The Taleban were not the right people to rule. They did not have the expertise. All the same, there were many good things to their credit. Under the Taleban, you could travel in safety from one end of Afghanistan to another. The Taleban started as a reaction against the crimes that were being committed in Afghanistan, and then turned into a movement. We too perhaps. We are a reaction to a criminal system in this country. We do not want to rule. But if we are not recognized, then maybe we too will turn into a movement.21
Ghazi denounced the MMA Islamist alliance (while making an exception for the Jamaat): ‘They are opposing us, just like the MQM and other political allies of Musharraf. The MMA are just products of this Pakistani system. They do not stand for real change.’ A few days later, a JUI minister in the MMA government of the Frontier, Asif Iqbal Daudzai, told me in Peshawar that:
We support the basic demands of the Lal Masjid [Red Mosque] group: anti-corruption, the return of democracy, a ban on pornography, and laws based on the teachings of Islam. But we question their credibility as a democratic force and the way they are going about things is wrong. Passing new laws is the business of the parliament and government. Islam doesn’t allow anyone to impose their views by force, and the Constitution of Pakistan already defends both the basic rights of every person and the supremacy of Islam. The point is not to have a revolution, but to implement the existing constitution correctly.22
On the question of support for violence, Ghazi himself appeared to waver to and fro – just like the Jamaat, in fact. And as with the Jamaat and the JUI, whether this was from real doubts and internal conflicts of his own, calculated ambiguity, a deliberate desire to deceive, or a mixture of all three was not entirely clear.
Our view is that suicide operations in Afghanistan and Iraq are halal [legitimate] because they help stop the aggressor from continuing his aggression. After all, US soldiers have travelled thousands of miles to kill innocent people. But such operations should not themselves kill civilians ... And terrorist attacks should not take place in Pakistan. You have to understand, though, that the people who are doing this are doing it from frustration and revenge. It is like a younger brother whose brother has been killed and who runs amok, forgetting about the law.
He gave what seemed a carefully tailored message to the American people:
Americans should think and think again about their government’s policy. If you talk to us and try to understand us, you can win our hearts. But if you come to attack us you will never win our hearts and will also never conquer us, because we are very determined people. How much have you spent on this so-called war on terror? Trillions of dollars. If you had spent this on helping develop Pakistan and Afghanistan, we would have loved you and never attacked you. But this is the stupidity of Bush, I believe, not of all Americans.
Among the various armed militant groups operating in Pakistan by 2007 Ghazi’s was therefore towards the more moderate end of the spectrum. It is notable that like the Jamaat he rejected sectarian anti-Shiism, since this has formed the bridge linking the Taleban among the Pathans with the Sipah-e-Sahaba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in central and southern Punjab (this alliance will be described further in Chapter 7 on Punjab).
In 2009, these groups contributed greatly to the spread of terrorism from the Pathan areas to Punjab. This included attacks on high-profile military targets which could hardly have been planned without at least low-level