Pakistan’s Buner District Falls to Taliban Takeover
Related subjects: Afghanistan, Anjika Sridhar, Arms Proliferation, Asia / Pacific, Diplomacy & Politics, Iran, Obama administration, Obama's 1st 100 days, Pakistan, Security & Surveillance, The Global Intercept Comments (2)
After just over two weeks of sporadic fighting in the Buner district of Pakistan, between the Swat Valley —now under shari’a law and run by the Taliban— and the nation’s capital, Taliban fighters have reportedly forced the local government to flee. This leaves them within 100 km of the capital, Islamabad, where the insurgents may seek to claim control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
The government of Pres. Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto and interim head of her Pakistan People’s Party —until her son is old enough to assume control—, recently ceded the Swat Valley to Taliban-linked groups, who have imposed shari’a law, in an effort to prevent the further spread of the insurgency. But the insurgents immediately fanned out from Swat, moving into Buner, where they have reportedly seized control of the local government, looted hospitals, international charities and government offices, and from which they may seek to stage further attacks on government forces.
The continued presence of the Taliban has forced the leaders of the Awami National Party, which rules the North West Frontier Province, to leave the region and the intervention of the tribal peace jirga to make them vacate the area has failed, The News daily reported on Tuesday.
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The Taliban from Swat moved into Buner district about two weeks ago. They have occupied a three-storey bungalow owned by a businessman in Sultanwas village and are using it as their headquarters, the newspaper said.
Fateh Muhammad, a Taliban militia commander has been installed as regional political chief, and the Taliban have named Mufti Bashir to act as Qazi, or religious judge who takes the complaints of the people. Militants have reportedly murdered over 130 ANP activists in Swat, along with relatives of the party activists; as the ANP had governed in Buner, many officials have fled their homes, leaving a power vacuum. Some Buner ANP leaders have reportedly renounced their allegiance to the party, while others are calling for a crackdown on militants.
The problem is particularly striking due to the fact that the militia are made up of local and non-local elements, some from Afghanistan, and there is concern the local clerics who seek to overtake the Taliban movement may be naive in their own assumptions about the guerrilla movement. ANP figures have sought to use nationalist sentiment to turn the public against the rise of the Taliban militants, but local clerics have been instrumental in spreading the fundamentalist message.
Women in Swat and in Buner are now being forced to wear the full burqa, not a traditional part of their cultural life prior to the arrival of the Taliban. Caught up in the struggle for these Pakistani territories is the problem of national destabilization and the threat of nuclear proliferation. Pakistan is the only majority muslim country to have built nuclear weapons, and so it is the prize of prizes for the Taliban insurgency, which seeks to spread its radical fundamentalist brand of shari’a law to as many lands as possible.
Recent tensions between Washington and Tehran, specifically relating to the jailing of an American journalist by Iran and Pres. Ahmedinejad’s anti-Israeli tirade at the Geneva anti-racism conference this week, are making real cooperation between the two states less likely, but Iran had pledged its help to the US-led forces in Afghanistan in combatting the spread of the drug trade there. And Iran has a direct interest in Pakistan’s stability.
Nevertheless, there is the possibility that some low-level talks may occur between Washington and Tehran to negotiate an agreed policy for combatting the Taliban, to avoid any opposition from Iran if the US takes military action to combat the threat. Pakistan’s government has been increasingly willing to admit weakness in calling for recognition, both by the Pakistani people and the international community of the grave threat posed to the nation’s political integrity —and by extension the region’s stability— by this insurgency.
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[...] What we are seeing now in Pakistan is a good example: there is no guarantee that selective non-proliferation will not lead to cooperative black-market mechanisms that facilitate the spread of nuclear-weapons technology. Pakistan acquired the technology this way, and some of its black-marketeers may have further spread the technology they purchased. Pakistan is now experiencing severe political destabilization and the Taliban has taken over areas just 100 km from the capital. [...]
[...] With an Afghan-Pakistani hybrid Taliban taking hold of significant areas inside Pakistan, the nuclear-armed nation has become a grave security risk to the rest of the region and the world. After signing a deal with Pakistan’s government to take control of the Swat Valley and impose a brutal distortion of shari’a law, the Taliban almost immediately launched attacks deeper into Pakistan, taking control of parts of the Buner district. [...]