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Killing fields
WHILE the PTI-run government in KP continues to depict itself as the last remaining bastion of democracy in the country, pitched against the governments at the centre and other federating units, many parts of the province have once again become killing fields.
Target killers roam free in Bannu, Waziristan and other Pakhtun regions. Attacks against political workers, security personnel and ordinary civilians have become an almost daily affair. Religiously inspired militants sometimes acknowledge responsibility, but there is an eye-catching number of perpetrators in the now familiar category of ‘unknowns’.
Bloodletting in Kurram district reached unprecedented proportions a couple of weeks ago as local property disputes were instrumentalised by militant elements to stoke sectarian tensions at will. And yesterday, a bus of civilians was fired upon near Parachinar resulting in over 30 deaths.
In such cases, neither the chief minister of KP nor the prime and interior minister at the centre provide the general public with any meaningful information let alone chart out a strategy to deal with what, by any account, is a situation spiralling completely out of control.
There are important organic factors in the re-emergence of militants.
All we get are tired condemnations of ‘terrorism’, with none of our civilian political leaders ever saying openly that the resurgence of militancy might have had to do with the state’s previous backing of the Taliban in Kabul.
Neither is anyone willing to antagonise any of Pakistan’s big external patrons, namely the US, Gulf kingdoms and China, all of whom are part of the geopolitical games that underlie both current and previous waves of violence in Pakhtun regions.
There are also important organic factors in the re-emergence of the Pakistani Taliban and other militant groups. They are entrenched economic players in border trade, or what is routinely called smuggling. They extort money from transporters and shop owners in many of the Pakhtun tribal districts. I noted above that they take advantage of property disputes, particularly over agricultural land. Finally, these players have also developed big stakes in the extraction of a host of natural resources, including pine nuts, timber, mineral deposits, etc.
Geopolitical wranglings amongst all the big players in this sordid story also revolve around the desire to either exclusively control economic flows, or to at the very least ensure that competitors do not establish monopolies in trade, mining, construction and other sectors.
In Pakistan we are used to hearing that the only thing that matters is national security, but anyone with even cursory knowledge of the current violence in KP understands that this is just a handy catchphrase for a power game that is largely about social control and economic resources.
The contraband trade across the Pak-Afghan and Pak-Iran borders implicates states, militants, and a host of other economic players. Simply decrying ‘smuggling’ and putting up a fence here and there protects the big profiteers while destroying the livelihoods of the large number of small operators reliant on this trade. Political violence is then both cause and consequence of the deliberate reduction of this complex political economy to ‘national security’.
The PML-N and PPP have shown that they will do everything to appease those higher above them in the political food chain, both at home and abroad, so they are not about to bell the cat. But if the anti-establishment posture of the PTI — and the otherwise firebrand KP chief minister — is more than just a façade, we should expect more critical reflection on the epidemic of violence in Pakhtun tribal and other districts. Indeed, the chief minister himself hails from D.I. Khan, which is at the crossroads of so many recent attacks.
The underlying problem is the militarised and imperialised structure of power in this country. The power of the religious right — and militant groups especially — is a direct offshoot of this structure. The somewhat absurd spectacle of one federating unit’s official state apparatus engaging in mass protests against the centre should not distract us from the fact that the prevailing structure of power is floundering badly.
An anti-establishment politics is not about displacing those currently at the helm so that the next player can lurch towards yet another crisis of what is fundamentally an anti-people and anti-nature system.
Such a politics must be based on a programme for lasting peace, centred on economic redistribution, dismantling the establishment-centric political order, and a non-aligned foreign policy that privileges mutual cooperation with our neighbours.
The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.
Published in Dawn, November 22th, 2024
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