generalspeaking

Elusive Civilization

The Government of Pakistan sent its military to the Swat Valley to meet the challenge of fanatical Islamists extending their influence and control over villages and imposing strict Sharia law on the population.  Along with their interpretation of Sharia law, was the influence of culture as practised in remote mountain villages where tribal justice is regularly meted out to ensure that everyone knows their place.

There, as in Waziristan, part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the tribal villages actually administered themselves.  There has always been a lack of federal government presence in the mountainous areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the tribes more or less administering themselves, and with the culture and tradition and justice of tribal Islamism and Sharia in full force.

Pakistani girls attending a school in Mingora, Pakistan's Swat Valley G.K. Bangash/The Associated Press

And the place of girls and women generally is to be unseen and unheard, to be modestly covered, head to foot, and not to anticipate that they will be the recipients of too much in the way of education.  It has often been observed by those involved in human rights and democracy that the tenor of a society can be assessed by the level of education given its female population.

The Pakistani Taliban, at the time of conflict in 2009 between the military and their tribal militias, created huge swathes of refugees, people fleeing the villages where the conflicts were taking place, seeking refuge elsewhere.  The militias were fairly successful in expanding the territory under their control so far as to threaten the security of Pakistan's military nuclear installations.

Which made it paramount that the Pakistani military beat them back and regain complete control of those areas in particular.  Since then, the militias have kept a fairly low profile, although where they are ensconced they dictate to the locals what is permissible and what is not; any activities bearing resemblance to Western values definitely are not.

And it was for this reason that Malala Yousufzai, the 15-year-old schoolgirl whose defiance in attending school was met with an almost-successful assassination attempt that infuriated the people of urban Pakistan and made news around the world.  Now that the Pakistani military has determined it can safely withdraw its major presence from the Swat Valley, the militias are set to return.

The concept of turning over security to the tribal villages may sound good in theory, but it comes up hard against the reality that there is little in the way of local law enforcement, civilian government and infrastructure.  The militants have targeted others besides Malala; some are Taliban originating from Afghanistan, fleeing for safety into Pakistan; others are their Pakistani counterparts.

The very government military that now challenges them is the same military that once not so long ago gave them refuge, training, arms and encouragement.  And among many of the tribal villages in the Swat Valley there are those who value the presence of the Taliban, share their fundamentalist view of Islam and support their terrorist agenda.

Labels: Afghanistan, Human Rights, Islamism, Pakistan, Political Realities, Societal Failures, Taliban

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, October 23, 2012