POST-ELECTION DYNAMICS IN THE NORTH-WEST ...

CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE

POST-ELECTION DYNAMICS IN THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER

PROVINCE

WELCOME: FREDERIC GRARE,

VISITING SCHOLAR, SOUTH ASIA PROJECT CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE

SPEAKER:

MARIAM ABOU ZAHAB, RESEARCHER,

CENTRE D’ETUDES ET DE RECHERCHES INTERNATIONALES

THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2008

Transcript by Federal News Service Washington, D.C.

Transcript Not Checked Against Delivery

FREDERIC GRARE: Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome again to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I mean, as you can all see, right after the election, part of the enthusiasm from Pakistan certainly disappeared. But what has not disappeared so far is the issues on which all that interest was based, and this is precisely why we’re here today.

Just not so long ago, questions about what would the new government do with the

situation in the FATA was a central issue, and it’s still probably a central issue. But what has not really been explained so far. And I know it has surprised many in Washington to the extent that even in demonstration it took a while before understanding the magnitude of what has happened, before understanding the meaning of what had happened and, even more so, to start and then just saying to start modifying policy.

So the purpose of this precise event is not to try to discuss policy, but to try to

understand what has happened in the NWFP in the FATA. And for that, we have the pleasure this morning to welcome Mariam Abou Zahab. I can tell you all which is a new invitation about Mariam but what she is, first and foremost, is somebody who knows deeply, intimately, all the region for having been there on both sides of the border for quite some time; to know personally a number of people who have been discussed over the years in the news, and to know what it means – what the situation means quite precisely in the area.

So I don’t think there is a better introduction than that. So if there is no better

introduction than that – (chuckles) – I will certainly immediately give her the floor, and we’ll start our conversation, of course, right after that.

MARIAM ABOU ZAHAB: Okay, good morning, all, and thank you very much for

being here. I’m very thankful to Frederic for inviting me and giving me this opportunity to talk about something which I’ve been following as closely as I can for now about 35 years. I mean, the first time I traveled there it was ’73; I suppose some of you were not even born. (Chuckles.) I know Joshua (ph) wasn’t born. (Chuckles.) And while things have changed a lot in the frontier since those days but there are still a few things which, I mean, we can understand.

I apologize for my bad English, first of all. It’s not my mother tongue. I’ll do my

best, but I hope you’ll be understanding. What I was planning to talk about is restricted to the NWFP, so there would be

nothing about the churches’ restoration, nothing about nuclear issue, nothing at all – you know, you cannot follow everything, and my topic is NWFP and sectarian issues or so. But there are sectarian issues in the NWFP these days which everybody’s just overlooking. So what I will try first to do is to explain, try to explain, why was the MMA defeated and why it was not a surprise. Then, the new political landscape, the ANP and the militants, what they want to do, that’s to address militancy according to Pashtun norms and traditions, which means through jirgas. And what they have started to do, to bring FATA in the mainstream, if you would, by the FCL, the debate around the frontier crime regulations and FCL, what it means.


And of course, a few words about this agreement in Swat, and the other agreement which is in the pipeline with the Batal (sp) al Massoud, I’ve sent yesterday, before leaving Paris, a few emails to people I know in Peshawar and then the Ihwan (ph) and places like that, asking for the Urdu text of the agreement because that’s what I’m interested in. Not the kind of English translation of those things; I want to see the Urdu text because we might have a few surprises. So, so far, I’ve not received anything but I hope that might come soon, and then we can just analyze and discuss it more deeply.

Why did the MMA lose in the NWFP? Well, actually, because the MMA has

practically broken up because if you see the combined vote, it’s still higher than all the others. And the turnout was particularly low because of course the government would tell you 40 percent and all, but don’t believe that; don’t believe that. This is totally false. They say that officially, 27 percent of voter turnout in FATA and 18 percent in Swat. But when you see places like Waziristan, places like that, where it’s already a miracle elections could take place there, but even then you have, when you see the number of people who turn up to vote, it’s 10, 15 percent, not more. And the people who are elected were elected with sometimes twice less votes than in 2002.

So first, there was a very low turnout, particularly in urban areas, as usual. The

MMA was elected in 2002 because people wanted change, because PPP and ANP had delivered nothing in terms of Pashtun riots and provincial autonomy. And the MMA didn’t deliver on that and those elections again, in 2002, were some kind of referendum by the first pro or against Musharraf, against military operations in the FATA, but also who is the best defender of Pashtun rights. And then, there was competition between the ANP, the tribal militants – and I have no time today to talk about that; I’m preparing a paper on that, as all the Pakistani Taliban as the greatest defender of Pashtun values with Mangulban (ph), who is a very interesting person for this discourse or this during the ways, for inventing Pashtun values.

So there was this kind of competition and the ANP – I was in Peshawar in January

and I was with the ANP people and following the campaign, you know – and what was very interesting was that they say we are the best defenders, the only defenders, of Pashtun values and if you vote for us, Pashtun blood would not be spilt. And so that’s what people voted them for. And then, to military operations and provincial autonomy; those were the main things. Of course, the change of name of the province, but that’s not really important.

So actually, it’s not the MMA as such which was defeated, but the JUI because

Jamaat-e-Islami boycotted the election, and Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam without Jamaat Islami cannot organize an electoral campaign. Everybody needs – when you want to have this kind of big mass street movement, without the Jamaat Islami you cannot do anything, particularly in urban areas. And then, there was this problem, this personality problem, with Maulana Fazlur Rehman, and he could not campaign. I couldn’t meet him, you know, in January because I tried through Mufti Abran (ph) and people like that, and Maulana sort of has gone to Saudi for hajj, for umrah at that time. He stayed and ah, I said, right, because he’s scared. There were bomb plots, you know, and people wanted to kill him.

So when he wasn’t there he finally wouldn’t leave his house, and then he left for Saudi Arabia. And the Pashtuns didn’t like that. I mean, you have to be brave; you cannot


just run away like that. So then, he said, he came back and said okay, I can talk to you, but on the phone, you know. I sit at home and I sort of give interviews on the phone, nothing right. And you’ve seen what’s responsible for the old massacre of the don Mashhad and the assault, and so people – so that he had opposed the al Massoud brothers. And he was responsible for that, it was largely perceived as supporting Musharraf and secretly collaborating with the U.S., so that was all very bad for him.

And Fazlur Rehman and his two brothers were defeated in the Ihwan, and he was

elected on a very safe constituency in Benuo (ph) because, you know, Akklam (ph) Durrani was kind enough to find a safe constituency for him. So it was very much this – what was very much an empty Fazlur Rahman vote, to some extent, in Barifbi (ph). But that doesn’t mean that you should count them out because they have a vote base in south and the Barifbi, in the rural areas, and this has been there since before partition. So you should not just count them out, and they have to be taken into confidence now about what’s going on, even if they failed. They failed before, but just cannot count them out. Well, people had also this mullah fatigue. The mullahs didn’t deliver because people hoped they would bring peace or dialogue, kind of make incentives, jobs, education, everything. And they did not deliver; they could not protect the people. Militancy got worse, and the level of violence has increased tremendously. People are fed up with all the economic problems because there are no jobs, because of the violence, you know. But also because they accumulated personal wealth; they were rural poor, people voted for them for that reason, and then they became very rich, and so also it’s something which didn’t go well with all the people who were just having a hard time through electricity, power, you know, cuts and no gas, no electricity. And it was so cold in January this year, I cannot imagine. And no gas, no electricity, no floor, no – it was really difficult, and all that during the election campaign. So the mullahs were blamed for that also. Some people were upset by the banning of music, theater, and all those things, and that’s for the urban middle class didn’t like that. And also, they had something which many people told me – I ask the people who you vote for the MMA, again they said no. Why, because they didn’t bring Sharia. I said, yeah, okay, but what does it mean? And Sharia means social justice and nothing else; you know, it’s very local interpretation of Sharia. And that was one of the main reasons for many people why they didn’t want to vote for MMA again. And so, there are a few of the reasons why they were defeated, but it was not surprise, everybody knew it. Everybody knew it was going to happen and while the ANP was coming back, and while we saw the U.S. had been helping them to come back, you know, for a couple of years, but the ANP people themselves were surprised by their success. And talking to ANP people, leaders, after that in February and March and they told me, you know, we didn’t expect such a big success, you know. So it was like the MMA in 2002; you want to bring them into the provincial government, but you don’t want them to be, you know, in a position to dominate the provincial government because then it’s very difficult to deal with them. And that’s exactly what happened. Then, what are the prospects for this ANP-PPP coalition government in the NWFP? It’s a question of give-and-take. ANP had a very bitter experience with the PML once


before, and it had very recently a history of infighting, factionalism. It was really close to the breaking point a few years back, and it was difficult to believe that they could come back like that. And, well, ANP’s Pashtun; PPP’s not. Historically, they have the same type of program: pro-socially, pro-poor, pro-minorities, pro-women and also – that is not a problem. They are opposed to religious extremism and all that, and there is a conditional support that the ANP’s giving to the PPP in the center; in exchange, you get support for issues concerning Pashtuns. So it might work, it might not work. For the time being, it will work as long as the ANP is dominant.

But I was just reading this morning, before coming here, their new ministers have been inducted; 26, I think, 26 members, the largest ever cabinet in the NWFP. So, but you have to accommodate everybody, you know, and you had a lot of so-called independents who joined the PPP or joined the ANP afterwards, and so you have to accommodate a lot of people and, I mean, what he said now, we’ll stop it at that but no, we could ask the people who are not pleased because they didn’t get, you know, in some districts are not represented at all, particularly the Aptabad, Haripur and those places which are still a stronghold of the PMN. So those people, you have to accommodate them and find something for them. And also, 26 might not be the end, and then it’s very difficult; how can you manage the province with such a huge cabinet.

The problem between PPP and ANP might be around this autonomy thing, which is

seen in the manifesto by the PPP people as secessionist, and that might be a problem. And I quote, “federating units which wish to reorganize on the basis of cultural, linguistic, and geographic similarities shall be free to do so.” And that, for some people in the PPP, looks like secession. And also, this kind of PPP policy of cooperation with the U.S., which has negative impact on the relations with ANP locally because the ANP people really don’t trust the PPP when it comes to negotiations and things and all this, and PPP’s still playing the U.S. game.

And also, you have to think about Pashtun dynamics in Karachi. That’s important

because what has been going on in Karachi while the ANP people now have two members in the provincial assembly, which is also unprecedented, which means that now it’s – before it was kind of transporter lobby, a freely transported lobby in Karachi. That’s how it started.

It’s extremely interesting, this invention of a Pashtun identity in Karachi. This has

been going on for two-three years; it’s really fascinating. And now, they have two members in the provincial assembly, and there’s still this problem of 12 May, 2007, when they were massacred by the MQM. And now, the ANP people so far, they could manage to keep the troops, say okay, no revenge, peace, we are peace-loving people; you know, this image of the Pashtuns, who want to restore all this Mechahan (ph) and this and that. They’ve been insisting very much on that; they want to change the image Pashtuns are not terrorists, fundamentalists, and that. So you should not retaliate in Karachi, but how long will that last? When you see the MQM people have again started transforming Karachi into killing feeds, so you never know where it might stop. So it’s still very, very volatile, the situation in Karachi.

Okay, then two things we should not forget is that the victory of ANP is seen as a

victory for secularism is, perhaps, too optimistic; that the religious and nationalist vote do


overlap in the NWFP. The ideology of the ANP has been more diluted. They are more pragmatic, but you shouldn’t see them as secularist because the vote bank is very much the same. People can, you know, switch from one party to another. And the anti-U.S. sentiment is equally strong than in 2002, if not stronger because of the suicide attacks and all. And the ANP is totally against allowing U.S. troops to operate on Pakistani soil, even if it is, you know, to train the frontier corps or whatever. And they are, of course, totally against allowing U.S. planes to bomb suspected terrorists. So this can only alienate the population and radicalize the population.

So what the ANP wants, it’s a kind of political approach, socioeconomic

development. They said we want pens, you know, for our children; pens and not guns, and they insisted on that. That is a long-term solution; it takes time. But there is political consensus, and that’s what’s very important, is the difference between now and what was before, whether the deals in 2004, 2005, even the deal in September 2006. It’s a question of political consensus because this time you have a consensus, political parties and the army, and you have the backing of the people. So it’s totally different configuration because before, it was something which had the army was negotiating directly with the militants, the political parties were not party to that, and the army did not always implement its side of the deal. So a deal has to be implemented by both sides, and not only by the militants. And we know that in tribal dynamics use of force doesn’t pay so, you know, we’ll see what will come out of that.

Now, the huge, huge, challenges for this government: Will the ANP be able to

implement its manifesto, revive this old image of the frontier as peace-loving and all; initiate economic activity; provide health, education; decentralize power; be able to manage its resources, and get all the necessary funds from the federal government and get the necessary autonomy? This is still a question nobody knows, you know, whether it would work or not, but they can do it or not. And the ANP can succeed only if the army wants it to succeed, that’s the problem. And so far, the army is cooperating. The army might become impatient; you never know what might happen because they army, they are like the U.S., they want quick-fix solution. The Pashtuns are not like that. They take their time, and they are really in the long term and they really want to take their time, and they know that this will take a long, long time. The army is opposed to provincial autonomy, of course, because they are afraid of what might happen in Baluchistan, Sin, and all that. So they are not prepared to give.

So if the ANP wants to succeed, it has to extract powers from the center that would make the NWFP autonomous. If the ANP gets the change of name, which is not really important, and autonomy, then it might win people away from the Taliban. Like that, it might work because you have to secure recognition of their identity. And what do they want? You know, what do the people want? I mean, I was talking recently with young students, they are from Banu, from educated family. One of them, the one thinking about how he was educated in Razmak Cadet College when he was a kid and is now in university, and his brothers and all their friends – so they are not tribal people, they live in Banu. And then I was talking with tribal students from South Waziristan who are now out, based in the Ihwan. And this new generation, what do they want? What they want is they are very proud to be Pashtuns, but they are very proud that Pakistani identity – they really cherish it. It’s something very important for them. So what do they want? They want the NWFP to be


part of the federation, but to have something different which can be a recognition of their separate identity, the different identity. They do believe in these tribal systems and values and all so they don’t want the FATA to stay the way they are. And what I can say, whatever you can think and whether we like it or not, I am nearly sure that – I’m not taking a big risk saying that – I am nearly sure that 20 years from now, there won’t be any FATA anymore, which doesn’t mean that it will become part of the NWFP. That’s not what the people want. They want to be in the mainstream, but to some extent keep their autonomy, have a different province, have something different, but keep their identity. And that’s something very, very important. They want to stay Pashtuns and to be recognized as Pashtuns with a different identity. But they don’t want Pashtunistan or whatever anymore. Nobody is interested in that anymore because it’s no more – you know, they are Pakistanis and they don’t want to have anything to do with the Pashtuns from the Afghan side of the border. Things have changed a lot since ’47, even if the border if virtual. But they are different. And, anyways, I suppose some of you have listened to these – watched these very interesting videos made by the Canadians, the Globe and Mail in the villages southwest of Kandahar. And it’s a pity that the sound is very bad because you cannot follow the Pashtuns as well as you would want to. It’s just fascinating because when you see – as those young – they are very rule-based Taliban and they asked them, what about the Durand line? Is it official or unofficial? It’s unofficial. Right. So, you mean, Peshawar and Quetta, they are in Pakistan or in Afghanistan? Afghanistan, of course. Then, the next question is more interesting: Do you want to separate state for the Pashtuns? And every one of them says no. And that is very frustrating because if I had been the one asking the questions, I would have said, well, why? Why no? You know, to know why is it so that they seem so sure of themselves? We don’t want Pashtunistan; we don’t want separate state. But, at the same time, we consider that there is this Pashtun identity; something should be done for that, for our way of life, also fighting for our way of life and for our land. So we can come back to that during the debate if you want.

Now, the implications of the – can the jirgas work? Of course, a lot of people say, after what happened – the militants, and I’m not sure it’s the militants – attacked a funeral procession in Swat and the militants attacked this kalmy (ph) jirga in the Radamhel (ph) so jirgas cannot work because the militant are under 30. Well, nobody believes, you know, in the Radamhel and around that the militants did it. And, personally, I don’t believe that the militants did it. And, anyways, the perception is more important than the truth in this kind of field.

The people say, well, Betulaw (ph) would never do such a thing and Betulaw is a very

convenient catch-all. You know, before we had Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. Everything was dumped onto Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. Everything was dumped onto Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. And now everything is dumped on Betulaw which means that then you don’t have to, you know, do further investigations and all you say is, it’s Betulaw. Then, okay, you’re safe.


Well, Betulaw would never do that anyways and it would not attack a jirga, which wants troops withdrawal from the FATA, which is something logical. And there are a lot of other things people say. People think that the attackers and the planners were not tribal and this attack was an effort to jeopardize, was made to jeopardize efforts to bring the Taliban to negotiations. And people see that the same way as they see that there is an American bombing in the FATA every time there is a deal about to be signed. So people, you know, perceive that exactly the same way. They say, the foreign hand and the new great game and this and that, yeah, all kinds of stories.

And so what’s interesting is that the perception was and I wouldn’t buy that 100

percent, but that sounds, you know, plausible to me that the attackers could be those Punjabi militants, members of banned jihadi groups. And that’s a problem because, after 2002, you banned Jaish-e-Mohammed; you banned Sipa-e-Sahaba, which is the same thing, by the way; their membership overlaps a lot. And then, okay, but you don’t do anything against those people. Still they change the name and they go on.

And then they find the sanctuary in the tribal areas because then they have all of

their links and particularly in Kurram Agency, in Lower Kurram, and they have – they’ve been there, you know, they have – they were with the Taliban in Afghanistan before 2001; they have a lot of networks and also they can have a safe haven there.

And that’s when you start again having new sectarian violence in Kurram, in Orexian

(ph), in Hangu, in places like that and very, very violent. And you see, you know, the SSB and Jaish-e-Mohammed is behind that, the Punjabi militants are behind that. And then you have this decrease in Kashmir, yeah, also groups on Kashmir and, again, HUM are – (inaudible) – which is also overlapping to a great extent with Sipai Sama (ph) and Jaish-e-Mohammed so it’s all very blurred, the whole thing. And those people now, they are jobless because nothing is happening, you know, in Kashmir so they have to do something.

Well, the Lashkai type of people, some of them, are fighting in Kunar. They have

their own networks and they’re okay now; they’re busy there. And some of them are still busy in India and Kashmir. Anyway, you still have this very Lashkai-style of operations going on which nobody talks about in the West. But all of those Punjabi people, they are there and they are in the – (inaudible) – ageny; they are there. Who is, you know, manipulating them? Who is using them to cut the supply routes and all of that? Nobody knows.

I don’t buy every word that Salim Shahzad writes, but he is sometimes right and

sometimes he sees things which are not – yeah, okay. I don’t buy everything he writes, no. Anyways, so – which means that when people feel this attack on the jirga, they see that the U.S. wants to cause chaos and violence in FATA, describe FATA’s dangerous zone to attack it. And so this is very much now these days what people are thinking in the underbelly of tribal areas. That’s why they are in such a hurry, you know, to conclude deals, because everybody thinks that – the belief is that the U.S. is preparing to intervene militarily and that the U.S. is seen as the biggest hurdle in the talks.

And so people are really, really scared. So every time something happens, they say,

okay, the U.S. is doing it because the U.S. doesn’t want peace in the FATA. But you have to


negotiate with them. The thing is, how to engage the locals, how to protect those who are involved in the peace process because you know that all of the pro-government maliks and all have been killed or have left the area since 2003. So that’s the problem. What can you do? Can you protect the people who are engaged in this process?

Then the negotiation’s right, you might say, it means granting equal status to the

other party. And then what do they want? They want a lot of things which are impossible. They want the removal of Musharraf; they want a change in foreign policy that’s the end of the U.S. alliance. They want the volition of the FCR. Right, that’s possible, but for the rest, it’s difficult. To start a negotiation, you have to ask more to get a little.

Anyways, in Swat, what people will say, okay, Swat, they released Sufi Muhammad.

Sufi Muhammed is a nobody; he’s an old man; his moderate doesn’t mean anything because, you know, it’s something low; it’s much more radical than he is not ready to accept. But, just give them a chance. Let them do it on their own terms. It might work. It might work. It will take time, that’s all, but let them do it.

Just a few words on the FCR and I will stop it at that. Again, what do the tribal

want? The prime minister, Gilani, announced in his inauguration speech that the FCR would be repealed. And, immediately, everybody started, you know, protesting. And at the end, people, because they were not taken into confidence, it was a surprise; nobody was expecting this kind of statement. And, well, the tribals were not please; the JUI wasn’t pleased; the NP wasn’t pleased; nobody was pleased with that. And they say, yes, right, but what do you want to do? You want to replace it by what? And immediately you had then Peshawar seminars and this and that, FCR. For one week, there was activity around that.

Well, what do the people want? You have a minority – not more than 10 percent;

that’s what’s left of the maliks – who are totally against repeal of the FCR because they know the privileges they are going to lose so they stick to their privileges. They don’t want any change; they want the status quo. But they’re only 10 percent, anyways; they don’t count anymore. You know, things have changed. The social dynamics have changed so much in the tribal areas that you can count them out.

And then you have a majority of the tribal people would say, repeal no because if you

repeal the FCR, it means there is a legal vacuum and then it means that you will have other laws, other Pakistani laws, and we don’t want them. We don’t want them to be implemented in the tribal areas. We want amendment of the FCR. There is this territorial responsibility and collective responsibility clause which are black laws from the British and we don’t want the whole tribe to pay for some delinquent. So this should be changed.

Then we want the right of appeal. We want a jirga, but perhaps not the same type of

jirga as now. We want an elected jirga, which is very interesting. And the right of appeal, this decision to the jirga, to the high court in Peshawar, that’s feasible. I mean, there’s nothing extraordinary in that. And then they say, this – now there is a vacuum because the jirgas now, they don’t work anymore and anyways they were very corrupt and they were just a tool in the hands of the political administration, which was very corrupt; the maliks were corrupt and all.


So people don’t want that. And so that’s why in this vacuum this local Taliban could emerge as kind of an alternative moral authority and they are still doing it: cleansing society of social evils and doing justice. And this is much more in face with the tribal ethos, you know, what should be justice and social equality and all. People want an end to the unlimited power of the political agent so you cannot turn the clock back and say, okay, now we forget all what happened in the past 30 years and we bring back the system, the old system. No, people don’t want that anymore and the young people don’t want that anymore. And the disadvantaged people, all those minor lineages and all of the ordinary people, the Keshar, by opposition to the Meshar (ph), those they don’t want anymore, this system.

But the problem is that many, many tribes, they say, okay, let’s repeal the FCR, but

we want Sharia. Of course, well, that was not unexpected. We want Sharia, but which type of Sharia because every tribal area has a different interpretation of Sharia? It’s not this – your kind of standard Sharia, no. It’s the Sharia as it is interpreted locally with, of course, more riwaj that local custom than Sharia. And this changes from one tribe to another and from one tribal area to another.

So it’s very complicated. And people say, look, what happened in Swat? What

happened in Swat in the ’90s? This is – this was something which we don’t want to happen; they lost everything and, look, they had this movement for the implementation of Sharia and they had that violence; we don’t want that. So, okay.

Now, again, you saw, perhaps you saw that Sufi Mohammed, when he was released

with he said. He said, okay, now we will go on fighting peacefully for the implementation of Sharia; we are back to square one. What was very funny during the elections in January is Swat that everybody was thinking, we are the ones who will bring Sharia back to Swat and the PPP people – because the PPP people in the NWFP, they are not like the PPP people in general.

Well, for instance, they are against women voting and they are very conservative

when it comes to there, their own area. And they have a vote bank (?) I mean after – (chuckles). And the PPP people were touring Swat and they had very good results in Swat, but independents then voted to align themselves with PPP. And they said, look, those mullahs of the MMA, they were not even able to bring Sharia to Swat. We did when Benazir Bhutto was running the country. Can you imagine that? So vote for us and, again, you will get the Sharia in Swat and that’s exactly what’s happening now, you know, this kind of semi-Sharia, amended Sharia and all.

Now, about the reconciliation, I’ll just quote my friend Hasiab Hatak (ph): “We will

not take dictates or result to the use of force against our people only because others want us to do that,” others being the U.S. So, yeah, in case you didn’t understand. (Chuckles.) So just some – my conclusion will be that you should let Pakistanis decide their fate. This government is legitimate. The previous one was not felt as legitimate by the majority of the people. Help them to succeed and give them a chance. People voted for peace; peace voted for an end to military operations. If military operations go on like – there were very strange statements from the White House which came yesterday, which was extremely strange about


military operations should go on and you shouldn’t by your deed stop military operations – which was very strange.

And then Richard Bouche came, as usual, and said, no, no, no, it’s not that, you

know. Okay, so you must negotiate. You just let them do it on their own terms. It will take time, but there is no quick-fix solution in the NWFP and in the FATA; it takes time. And those people have a different perception of time than you people. The U.S. is always in a hurry. They are not in a hurry. They have their whole life.

And, again, what you see when you talk to people in Afghanistan and say, how long

will you fight? As long as we have those non-Muslim armies occupying our land. Okay, it might take long. Our grandfathers and our fathers they fought and our children will fight. It doesn’t matter; we have plenty of time.

So things – it takes time. And a destabilized Pakistan will not deliver more

effectively, on the contrary. And now you have a consensus between the army and the political parties, which is something new. And you saw that General Kayani briefed the political parties. There was a similar briefing for the provincial government in Peshawar and that’s something new.

Now there is consensus. Now the people are supporting the move, which was not

the case before. Before, whatever was done in the FATA since 2003, whatever it was, this carrot and stick and all, all the mistakes which the British did, they did them again – everything to get to the same situation in the end. They should have reading all of these books about Waziristan in the ’20s and ’30s. They would have learned a lesson, but nobody learns from history in Pakistan, no.

So now everything has been tried, but there was no support. You know, the army

was so demoralized; people were not supporting them. But now there is a consensus. Everybody wants peace so just give them a chance. Let them do it. As long as it takes, let them do it on their own terms. And the government is very pragmatic and let them have this comprehensive strategy based on political engagement, economic development, and backed by a credible military element because this is always – if it doesn’t work, we have not totally closed the door for military operations. And that’s how it works.

So, also – government has to make people own the world, make them realize it’s in

their interest to fight, and there will be a debate in the NWFP parliament, which is a very good thing. And so that’s how it should work. Now they are very suspicious of long-term U.S. intentions in the region. They still think that whatever the U.S. say, how much money the U.S. would spend in the FATA and all, they still think that U.S. is an unreliable ally and the U.S. will leave and then we’ll be left to cope with the turmoil long after the U.S. has left. So now just let them do it on their own terms.

Okay. Thank you very much. I’ll stop at that. (Applause.)


MR. GRARE: Well, thank you very much, Mariam. That was indeed a very rich presentation which gave us a lot of information which indeed raised a lot of questions as well. And I certainly use my privy as the chair to ask you a few of them starting with the fact – just an observation. You just mentioned, for example, that the vote for ANP is not a secular vote and, indeed, I mean, people are probably no less religious today then they were yesterday. But the question is, if you let your – ethnic identity prevail over your religious one in any political decision then can’t we speak of secularism no matter what the level of religiosity is beside that?

But the question I wanted to ask you is perhaps related to the nature of the

insurgency that we see and in particular, the role of the Panjadi (sp) group that you mentioned. It’s been said, for example, for quite some time that right after the earthquake, which exposed that fact despite the ban of January 2002, those groups had not been disbanded. They were actually still there, still being supported. And after the earthquake, which was sort of an embarrassment, they were shifted towards places such as Dir, Mohmand, Swat, and so on, and that they played quite an important role in the insurgency there. What is your assessment of this situation and how would you describe the nature of the insurgency? And to be more specific, are we speaking of a continuation of the Afghan one or are we speaking of a different phenomenon?

MS. ZAHAB: (Chuckles.) Well, the first part of the question: Religiosity is one

thing and the secular is another thing because there is more to it than that. But I’m not sure the ANP is as secular as the West makes it, so that’s another.

And you know, what has been happening since the ’80s, people are so afraid of this

Pashtun secular nationalism from Moscow, the Pashtuns were deliberately Islamized in the ’80s. Then, when they were so Islamized that Pashtun identity became Islam, different type of Pashtun, the Obandi (sp) Pashtun Islam, then it was seen as – (inaudible) – so again, they tried to again make them nationalist, which is as dangerous. But the Pashtuns now, I suppose, have understood and they have found something in between, different identity in between. But let’s see. It’s too early to say anything about that. See how it will evolve.

Now, the insurgency Dir, Swat, Mohmand, I don’t know because I cannot go there.

And I don’t have the same contacts there I have south. So it’s difficult to tell. Mohmand, definitely there are interesting things happening in Mohmand, which was quite a peaceful place. And the Mohmand region was even presented as a model in 2003, 2004, by the Pakistani government, saying, look, the people, they accept the money; they accept roads and all, and they’re very pleased; and there’s no insurgencies there. And now, we have.

And what will be interesting would be to make a profile, but that you need to be in

Peshawar for that and meet people and even meet the guy. This Khalid, this young fellow who is leading the Taliban in Mohmand, the profile is so similar to all of them, to – (inaudible) – to Abdullah, to Mangelbar (ph). They are all the same profile. So it will be interesting to – I started but I have very little information to know why all of a sudden you have this type of guy coming out. But Mohmand is interesting for the supply lines for NATO and all, so that’s why you might have some Punjabi militants there. But I don’t know.


I know about Kuram. I know about – (inaudible) – has been doing and all of the people who have been coming there. I know about Hamgu (ph), Oraxei (ph), and all that. But the north I don’t know. Bajaur has always been off-limits. In the ‘70s, even we wouldn’t go to Bajaur. It just was a place where you don’t go because you’ll be killed. It was like that. And Bajaur is a Sarafi (ph) and Lash Kati (ph) – that’s totally different networks, so Bajaur I won’t say anything about. I don’t know.

MR. GRARE: Thank you. So let’s start our conversation. Shuja has asked for a

word. Please introduce yourself briefly before you ask your question. Q: My name is Shuja Nawaz. Mariam, I wonder whether you could say a few words

about the relationship of the foreigners, as they are referred to, to the insurgency, and particularly the links between the foreigners or al Qaeda and the Punjabi jihadi groups, because it appears that some of the attacks in the hinterland have been tracked back to the jihadi groups.

MS. ZAHAB: Yes, you are perfectly right. I didn’t say a word about the foreigners,

meaning the Uzbeks, because there are a few Arabs but they are mostly Uzbeks. And no Chechen, no Chechen ever materialized. Yes, there has been – well, the foreigners have been instrumentalized locally by different tribes. I have explained that in another – (inaudible) – paper, how the minor tribes would instrumentalize the foreigners against the dominant tribe. And so, it’s all tribal gangs and tribal dynamics. And it changes very much from one place to another.

Now, Mullah Nazira (ph) had a very, very strange role. He was totally

instrumentalized by the government, by the agencies. And he himself used all those – you know, the Uzbeks – against the dominant Wazir clan and against the Massoud (sp). So this is a very complicated story and it keeps changing. Now you’ve seen what’s happening and it’s become kind of Wazir against Massoud, because you have to think that those people, the local Taliban – I’m not talking about the foreigners – the local Taliban, the only fight they have like the people who made much in December of this Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan, this TTP.

Great on paper, 27 factions, was it something like that? Great on paper that now we

are all united. We will all together all fight against. No, this is not the case. And this is also true for what’s happening on the other side. People couldn’t understand how it works in Kandahar and Emman (ph) that they will fight only on their wettan (sp), the wettan being their valley, their very small territory. They are scared to death when they go out of that. And anyway, the local people, they don’t want to have problems with another tribe so they wouldn’t let them fight because they don’t want to get involved and into those battles for generations.

So they have constraints. They are very limited. And all those intertribal – there are

more and more now intertribal conflicts. You see them in Waziristan. You see them in Kurram. You see them everywhere. So now the people in North Waziristan say, we don’t want those foreigners back. And now, there’s a problem. They say, we have made peace with the government. We don’t want them back. So they will keep moving from one place


to another. And definitely, they will go north. You saw some of them are in Swat, some of those Uzbeks. They reached Swat.

So it’s very, very complicated, extremely local. And every group has a local agenda,

sometimes very, very local agenda. It comes to the level of the village. And they would use the foreigners the way they use the NATO troops and the U.S. and the other side of the b order. They would use the foreigners against their local enemy to get advantage in a very local conflict. And alliances change all the time. So it’s kind of tribal dynamics. But to understand that, you have to spend considerable time there to talk to the people. You have to know the history of this particular tribal area.

And those people, they have such a memory of history. They would talk to you

about things, which happened in the days of the British in the 19th century like it happened yesterday. Even young people, they know all that. And for them, it means something. So you cannot generalize. It’s always kind of people manipulating each other for very local agendas. And they fight like a tribal war. It’s not a jihad. They fight it like a tribal war. And it’s very, very small, territorial, within small territorial limits. They don’t go out. It’s their land and their way of life locally.

MR. GRARE: Well, I guess the good news is that even the Taliban have their own

caveats, so we should be optimistic about that. Pauline, please. Q: Thank you. I’m Pauline Nyak (sp). I’m an independent consultant who does a

lot of work on South Asia and spent a government career doing South Asia. And my question was, if we – let’s suppose the United States followed your advice and let things play out – shocking idea – and let local and national processes play out in Pakistan. Let’s suppose we actually stood back and stood down our military operations, the whole business, just stopped. What effect would that have on the unity of the ANP and on the relations among some of these militant groups, the tactical cooperation we’ve seen at times among some of these groups?

I mean, my own perception, you can hear the assumption, is that to some degree, we

are a unifying force. They all have a common opposition to us. So what happens if we go away to this whole enterprise, both the political side and the outside political system piece of it?

MR. GRARE: Well, that’s – MS. ZAHAB: No, it’s true. I mean, it’s true. This anti-U.S. sentiment is so strong

that if it united – again, because they don’t want the U.S. to interfere. And you saw what we saw in Lahore last month was so incredible. You saw all those upper-class beghams (sp) demonstrating with their designer handbags and all in front of the U.S. consulate. I have never seen that before. So it means now everybody is on to U.S. And that’s got to the – (inaudible) – student who know everybody demonstrating. Well, this is something unprecedented. It was not madrassa students shouting in the streets.

So the same holds true for the tribal area. If you let them just, you know, do it, it’s

so fragmented and all that they will have – they will just play it by the tribal games. It will


take time. But in the end, it might work. It might work because nobody wants violence anymore.

And there is this tribal population. You know, the tribal people have suffered a lot.

There are so many displaced people. Can you imagine? I mean, it’s totally destabilizing. People are radicalized and destabilized.

In the middle of the winter, I saw thousands of people, refugees, in Peshawar and in

Mardan. And they were there in the tents in the middle of the winter because they don’t want to settle. They are dying to go back to their place. When they go back, what do they find? Their houses have been taken by the militants. Everything has been destroyed, you know. And you cannot find a place to rent – (inaudible) – because of the refugees. And probably have started and the – (inaudible) – is a very complicated social spectra. So you have problems with all those people who came from 0 it was before Massoud City. But you have the Beluch, the Siriki (sp) speaking. And problems started between the Siriki speaking and the Pushtu speakings from South Waziristan. And the rents have gone up. And all this is really, really very destabilizing.

And all those people who went to Karachi, because many of them had family in

Karachi, those who left for Karachi, they want to come back. And the MKM started saying, you know, this criminality is because you have all those tribal people. Well, this is provocative statements, you know. So this is something you have to think that everything has changed so much, those people are urbanized by force because they’re to leave the place. What’s going to happen, this next generation, and they see this fighting going on. The houses are burned, the people killed. They wouldn’t have joined the militants. First, give them jobs.

You know the number of unemployed young people in the tribal areas? When you

talk to them, what do they want? They just want to have a job and a house and live quietly and normally and raise the children, nothing else. But if you cannot give them a job, what can we do?

Now, it’s very, very – if you join the Taliban, you get salary. You get people who say

they get 15,000 rupees, which is a lot of money in the tribal areas. And you get a gun, so you get prestige and all. And you can lecture the people and it becomes – even if you are young, you have no tribal legitimacy. You have no religious legitimacy. You didn’t study. You are a dropout from the madrassa; you are nobody. And then, you become a Talib. You can lecture people even if you’re young and use justice. And you are this small authority.

Well, if I were a young boy, some of them join the Taliban, definitely, because there

are no alternatives. So first give them jobs and educate them, and then things will quiet down rather than bomb them.

MR. GRARE: Right, the gentleman behind please. We’ve got actually three

questions coming up: you, Professor Rizvi, and Paula Newberg, and Tuja, of course. Q: Thank you. (Inaudible) – from India Globe. My first question is that as far as

this area is concerned, as you said, even doing British was just like this at is today. They


wouldn’t or did not touch, even though they wanted it. My question is that so much money has gone for this area to clear the terrorism or terrorists or extremism from this area, almost $5.5 billion according to the GAO report just this week. But nothing has happened unless the Pakistani military really wants to keep this way or they are really serious to clean this area, because there is so much also – Pakistani military – over 100,000 on this area.

How the new government, you think, or you have any suggestions for the new

government – or how will this new government be different because this is bringing a bad name for Pakistan, also, embarrassment and all that. How long this can continue? It has been going on for the last 60 years since Pakistan got independence. So what is the future of this area or what U.S. can do or what do you suggest the new government in Pakistan?

MS. ZAHAB: Well, this area was totally neglected for years and years. So I mean,

the human development index is still very low. And well, Pakistani Army entered this area after 2003. Did they want to enter it or did they do it under pressure, it’s still not very clear for me.

Well, anyway, the money, which has been spent, the local people haven’t seen it.

You cannot start development work as long as you have military operations. This is impossible. You need stability first, which means withdrawal of the army. And then, you can start development work. But I was talking to UNICEF people in Peshawar. And they said, yes, we have this huge budget. But we don’t know how to spend it. We cannot spend so much money in the tribal areas; so the people who devise the budget, they don’t know. They’ve never set foot there.

So we should ask the people what do they want and how they want it to be done and

not impose on them what you think is good for them, because then it doesn’t work. You also have to think that. Ask them what you need, how they want to do it. Do it on your own terms and not try to impose them from outside what people in Washington think is good for the tribal people, you know? That’s also something you have to think about.

And this is not new. I mean, this has been going on for a long time. So much

money has been wasted. And also, you should not think that – I will say something, which is not politically correct. But then the Durand line, you have to develop both sides of the Durand line. And it’s very good that this – although I mean we cannot be overly optimistic about those jirga in Pakistan and Afghanistan, just CBM and nothing else. But it’s still very good psychologically that people are talking at least. They are sitting together. They are talking.

But you have to develop both sides of the border. And then, you have the refugees.

You have to integrate them. All those Afghan refugees completely change the demographic and religious balance in some of the tribal area. They are there. You have to integrate them. Some of them will not go back. Others will keep coming and going, you know, crossing the borders.

But you should have this soft border. That’s another problem. And then I don’t

want to talk about Afghanistan, but the U.S. – I would just repeat what I’ve been saying for now years and years that the U.S. should put some pressure on the Afghans. They should


understand that this border, you cannot always blame Pakistan for everything that goes wrong in Afghanistan. The Afghans have some responsibility in that, that this border should be recognized at least as an official border, even if it’s soft border. What the ANP want, the ANP wants it to be a soft border and people be able to cross, which is just normal.

And then also, the Afghans should be made to understand that Pakistan has

legitimate concerns about Indian presence in Afghanistan. That’s obvious. And the Indian presence is getting more and more. And this General Wardak roaming around in Srinigar, that went very bad with the Pakistanis. That was a kind of provocation. So I believe now they are talking about Indian troops training Afghan troops. And Pakistan is definitely paranoid about that. So also perhaps Hamid Karzai should understand there is a problem there, that the Pakistanis have a legitimate concern.

MR. GRARE: Well, there again is an issue we should – (cross talk) – in particular in

this development issue. I think that in between there is what do we do development for? And this is definitely not a way of questioning development and perhaps more importantly is who does development and who pays for it? And one of the key questions is the social contract should be between whom and whom? And that is, I think, something absolutely essential besides the fact that you mentioned that what a real – (inaudible) – they address is really a question of how much more is being spent there.

Professor Rizvi, please? Q: My question is about the foreigners in the tribal areas. While responding to Mr.

Shuja Nawaz’ question, you argued that there are some foreigners which are being used by different tribes in their local part struggle. However, if you go by the narratives that come through the American sources, we get the opposite picture. That is, there are Arabs; there are others with lots of money who buy off these tribal people and use those tribal people in Afghanistan or perhaps for planning another attack in the U.S. So what’s the reality?

MS. ZAHAB: (Chuckles.) It’s both. It’s not black and white. In the beginning,

after 2001, when the Arabs came, they had plenty of money. And that’s what started this kind of tribal – what I call tribal entrepreneurs were interested and jumped into this and they found a way of making money quickly. The Uzbeks have money, but less than the Arabs, so they were less interesting. But then the Arabs, so many of them were sold to the U.S. There were no Arabs left. But the Uzbeks were still there, and you had new Uzbeks coming in, particularly after Andijan massacre in 2005. So you still have regularly Uzbeks coming. So the Uzbeks used the local tribe; the local tribe used the Uzbeks because if you ally with the Uzbeks, you get the money and you get the guns. And then you can, if you are weak, you know, minor tribe, you can then – (inaudible) – this dominant tribe. So people are manipulating each other. Then now what the U.S. is now – this new thing like in France, we have the same to justify this policy of sending more troops into Afghanistan. We started getting on TV all kinds of just incredible footage made by embedded journalists, who just mix both sides of the border and tell you that the FATA is really a very dangerous place. And tomorrow we will get bombs in Paris by people coming from the FATA, so we have to send troops there.


And they have to be very careful about this kind of – there is much disinformation in that – just to make it look that it is dangerous that you must intervene militarily. And that is how locally the people feel. Well, there have been a few instances of people who say they were trained in FATA. But material evidence is, of course, more often lacking – so we have to be very careful about that. But most of the – just like the U.K. or France, people are radicalized in France or in the U.K. It is because they were already radicalized. They went to Pakistan, not the other way around. You know, so, this is not – MR. GRARE: We still raise the question of mentioning training facilities within the country with eventually government support. So the question is, again, misplaced, but it is not inexistent, which is like a different. Paula, please Q: Thank you very much. You have raised a huge number of very interesting questions. So I am just going to try to see if I can sort them out, and see if what I think you meant is what you actually meant. In a way, what you have done is start your analysis from the point of view of the tribes. But a lot of your comments have really been about the nature of building the state in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. And many of the narratives that you have provided, you could almost place almost anywhere in Afghanistan or in Pakistan. If you came and talked about Sindh right now, many of the comments would be quite similar certainly in Baluchistan and in large parts of Afghanistan. So what we – but your proposals are very much state-oriented. A number of them actually repeat history. And one of the problems I see here is actually in the accumulation, rather than the repetition. The same prospects that the Americans have been isolating for development of NWFP were Mr. Bhutto’s 35 years ago, just when you first started going. So in a sense, what you are doing is contrasting two sorts of things. On the one hand, a kind of a plea for a better informed state building, apparatus in both countries.

On the other hand, the consequences of a soft border are very different because they suggest that if you undertake state building, you are going to do it in very different ways. It is not just about crossing the border, but it is also about how you organize your economy, where loyalties and allegiance are. And in some respects, that overtakes the kind of ignorant blurting of the Globe and Mail interviews because if you ask the question of those guys, why do you not want Pashtunistan, the answer could be any number of things, because they were raised as refugees and they didn’t really know that there was a border, because they didn’t answer any other historical question correctly either, because ideology of Talibanism is really not a state-based function now.

But in the end, what you seem to be pulling toward is something that says there’re

responsibilities of the state on both sides, but they should be weaker somehow than they are anticipated to be in the idealistic thinking of either Kabul or Islamabad. And yet, the people that you are talking about are not being discussed as if they have responsibilities themselves because the biggest consequence of the soft border for the last 28 years, 30 years, has been the fact that there is an enormous amount of money available. It is just not available in the official economy, and no one has asked those tribes or those militants or anybody in between to think of those monies as being equitable to distribute among their own people. Somewhere in there, there is a question. And I would appreciate anything you have to say.


MR. GRARE: Who does what for whom and for what? Exactly MS. ZAHAB: Well, that is very interesting and you are absolutely correct. And I

have not been thinking about that so far. So it is very good for me to answer. But yet, it is true that a soft border means a lot economically. But anyway, already the Pashtun economy is something, which Karachi, Dubai, Peshawar, and Kandahar. It is not something which is limited to – and this is not new. This has been going on for a long time. So they are not deterritorialized but to some extent they are.

And then when you take the tribal system in Afghanistan, yeah, it is still there, but it

is nothing to be compared with the tribal system in Pakistan. It works a different way. So that is why I didn’t agree with the conclusions of the journalist – (inaudible) – from the Globe and Mail because first, his sample is not scientific. And then to say their tribes are excluded from the government doesn’t mean anything. That is not good at all. The system is different. Although the economy – you cannot deny doesn’t exist as far as the economy is concerned, as far as the – what goes on in Karachi and Dubai is concerned. You have this whole Pashtun – there is a Pashtun economy; whether it is Afghan or Pakistani, it doesn’t matter.

But at the end of the day, they are still feel Afghan and they feel Pakistani, something

which after ’47 moves completely a different way. It is something which would need much field work. I cannot now conceptualize it for the time being because I have not thought about it.

Q: But I think part of the problem, isn’t it that the – (inaudible) – is the strength,

not only Peshawar, Karachi, and Dubai but Canberra – MS. ZAHAB: Yeah. Exactly, yeah, yeah. And New York and wherever. Q: (Inaudible.) In other words, somebody told you that – (inaudible) – is really

depending on the burgeoning economy and capturing the political dimension as well. So there is a tension there.

MS. ZAHAB: There is tension in that. Yeah. Q: (Inaudible.) MS. ZAHAB: Well, yeah. And we don’t know. It all depends if the army wants this

government to succeed or not. That is the – at the end of the day, that is what it comes down to. If the army wants the ANP to succeed, they will; otherwise no.

MR. GRARE: There is a larger question, which is also being raised here, which is

what do we mean by soft border because this is becoming increasingly the fashion of the day. Slowly, but surely, I mean, we have to develop a sort of Pashtun economy. I mean, we cannot complain at the same time that the borders are very porous, and indeed, they are. And they are still smuggling and as you both mentioned, there is money in the area and a lot of trade being done actually in the area. So what is the concept of soft border that we are


trying to talk about? And what would the difference be between the current reality beyond the rhetoric, and as you said, Paula, perhaps a level of officiality of the Taliban.

Okay, we will ask the question next time. There will be enough for a new seminar.

The gentleman over there and then Josh. Q: (Off mike) –of the Voice of America. You talked about the crisis of tribal

regions, but didn’t mention who is behind the crisis. Who is really behind the crisis? Who are the key players, and whether it is a design crisis. That was my question.

MS. ZAHAB: You mean the crisis now or – Q: Yeah, in the tribal regions. MS. ZAHAB: Now? Q: Yeah. MS. ZAHAB: After the elections or before? Q: No, the whole crisis. MS. ZAHAB: The whole crisis? The whole crisis goes back to the ’70s. There is a – Q: I mean, the Taliban. Who created Taliban? Who is behind the Taliban? All

right. It is general understanding that the intelligence is playing a key role in regrouping them and whatever. What is your understanding?

MS. ZAHAB: Well, as far as the – what the Afghan Taliban are concerned –

definitely everybody knows that intelligence agencies played a role in giving them scale and sustenance. But they were Afghans to start with. They were not created by the West. They were Afghans.

As the Pakistani Taliban are concerned, they appeared in a vacuum. It is a social

movement. I mean, I personally analyze that that is a social movement. It acted in a vacuum created in the ’80s. And what happened in the FATA is parallel to some extent to what happened in the Pashtun part of Afghanistan with the Taliban. It happened just 10 years later in Afghanistan with the same root, the same causes – the same thing in the end. So it is a social movement. You cannot stop that. And it has to do – there was a change of political opportunities. You can apply the social movement theory, it works perfectly well. You can apply it to Khyber Agency, to Kurram it works perfectly well. So the model, there is something there. You know?

So it is something which has to do with the dynamics of the tribes and the dynamics

of Pakistani society as a whole. It is not something engineered, you know, by the agencies. The agencies can be there and can give sustenance to the movement, but the movement is there. And you cannot stop a social movement.


So now you can say, okay, we will go back to these political agent Manik (ph) and all, we’ll start again. No. That is finished, you know. Things have changed. Society is no more what it was in the ’70s because Pahtuns have been going out and there is a whole generation. They went to Karachi. They went to Dubai. They work, they travel, they saw something. And they just want – they want very simple things. They just want not to be second-class citizens anymore. They want the political parties’ act to be applied in the FATA, which means a lot of things. It would change a lot of things.

But then, you have to know that on the one hand, you say, okay, we want to

democracy and all people should vote. And then when they don’t vote the way you want them to vote, then you say, no, we don’t want it anymore. So no, you have to accept it. And now this government is legitimate; this government wants to negotiate. They might succeed. They might not succeed. But just give them a chance.

MR. GRARE: Josh, please. Q: Josh White from Johns Hopkins, SAIS. Thanks for a great and a very interesting

presentation. And I wanted to ask about sectarianism, in particular. I know you thought we would never get there, both Sunni-Shi’a and – (inaudible) – and all of the other various flavors. And people look at what is happening in the FATA and in the settled areas, both in Khyber and Parichinar with sectarian violence. And how much of what we are seeing now is kind of unfortunately just the background noise of sectarian conflict? And how much of it strikes you as being unusual or as being something particular to the current political environment?

And then the second part of the question related to that is really what is the relation

between the sectarian violence and these other movements we are seeing – the Taliban-like movements. Beyond just the fact that there are some sectarian groups like Sipah-e-Sahaba in some of these areas. What do you see as the relation between these two social movements or these two kind of groups?

MS. ZAHAB: Well, it is very different from one place to another. Kurram is very –

it is not new in Kurram it was even there in the days of the British. That is why Parachinar was on the British side of the Durand line, by the way, because people were persecuted by the Mangales tribes from the onset. Parachinar, it is not something new, because I hear people regularly in France saying, you see now they are killing Shi’ites in the tribal area, as if to prove that al Qaeda is – (inaudible). This is total nonsense. You have to know that historically this is not something new. It happened regularly the last time in Parichinar, 1927. And the people said, 200 years back. I said, what do you mean, 200 years back? You know this Kalaya (ph) Shrine? I said, yeah, it was 1927. It was not even 100 years back. For them, it is 200 years back, but it was yesterday.

So this is not something new. And then you had in the ’80s and all because so many

Afghan-Sunni tribes came. And then even in 2000, that was before 9/11, you had in Kurram – I have written about that more, but it has not been published so far – you had local people who called themselves local Taliban. Sunnis who attacked Shi’as were powerful, who had lands and all to just push them out of Hangu and in Kurram. So this is not something new. This comes back regularly. And when you see what it comes down to, it


has to do with land. It has to do with local power. It has to do a lot of things, nothing to do with religion. People happen to be Sunnis and Shi’as, but the real problem is somewhere else.

Khyber Agency, it is not a problem. It is also very interesting. Mangelbar, well, I

was told by some tribal elder, some Khyber, that Mangelbar is a Sipah, which would be very interesting if it belongs to Sipah. Tribe Sipah is very minor, which would be very good for my model because it would work to have somebody who is really a – (inaudible) minor tribe, who will just try to manipulate something against the more dominant Afridi clans. So it is kind of factional struggle intra–Afridi. And both the peers were, of course, foreigners. (Inaudible) – was from Samangan, from Afghanistan. He had nothing to – he had roots there, but he had nothing to do there. And the other one, Mufti Shakir (ph) was from somewhere – (inaudible) – he was not from the area. They were both outsiders and they have been manipulated by different groups.

And even after they were expelled because there were local jirga people asking them

to be expelled because they didn’t want these sectarian problems there. Then you had two groups and they started manipulating that. And of course you know how important it is because the shrine is Sheihan (ph) for instance. Sheihan is so near from Peshawar. And it is so important for smuggling and for all kinds of activities. Everybody wants to control that. So again, it comes back to power, to economy, to a lot of things, which have nothing to do with – (inaudible) – problem. This is something – it is a tool to mobilize the people. So it is very, very different from one part, even inside the tribal regions, from one tribal agency to the other. And now it has spilled over to Orakzai. It spilled over to Hangu, Benu even. Benu is – and – (inaudible) – is very, very sectarian. This is not something new. And it was obvious – I remember in December, 2005, I was there and moving around in the Ihwan and places and all, but still it was less time. We could go to the Ihwan in Kohat (ph) without any problem. But Kohat is very sectarian also, by the way, because of this Baracha (ph) guy and his madrassa.

So I came back. That was just before Ashura and before Muharram. And I came

back to Islamabad and people asked me, people, you know, higher-ups and the police and all and dealing with sectarian issues and all. So how do you feel? And I said, well, I feel that Muharram is going to be very, very tense in the Ihwan. They said why? I said, well, I feel it, that’s all, talking to people, I feel it.

And then I left back for France, and it immediately started in the Ihwan, even before

Muharram. I said, my god. People might think I had inside information and I kept it for myself. I didn’t have – just a feeling. So this is – among the people who were elected in the Ihwan as independent, there is a guy who is Harifa Abdukaium (ph), who is now elected to the provincial assembly as independent. Who do the guys – the official Sipah-e-Sahaba in the Ihwan – can you imagine. That guy – so since I’m not, this would go on. This is also on the top of the rest of this sectarian problem.

So it was just displaced some because people say now there is no sectarian problem

because in Punjab, nothing is happening. It is displaced there because also you have those Sipah-e-Sahaba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad people who are there, who are outsiders. Outsiders can kill local people. They won’t get involved into battles and reprisals. They


don’t fear. They can just kill people. And they are used by the tribes also for that. They give them shelter, and then you just look the other way when they go and kill. And they create problems locally.

MR. GRARE: Any other questions? Then I will ask the last question, which is all

along your presentation, Mariam, you have spoken of many articles that are still being published. So my question is simply when will you publish them because you are definitely a source of information. Maybe you can’t answer that very specific question, but with this – question is going to come to a close. Thank you all for coming this morning. Thank you, Mariam, for a very enlightening presentation.

MS. ZAHAB: Thank you very much. Thank you. MR. GRARE: And let me invite you for our next presentation, which is on May 2nd

with a seminar – (inaudible). Thank you very much. (END)

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