To the frog-chorus of politicians and intellectuals recommending "negotiations" with the Al Qaeda-led elements, one can only offer a glimpse into what the warlord in Swat wants. As a topic for discussion, he has put forward three demands: 1) evacuation of Swat so that he can legitimise his occupation of it; 2) enforcement of sharia in the area - which of course means the kind of sharia enforced under Talibanisation; and 3) scrapping of all criminal cases registered against his men. This is what the militant elements in the Tribal Areas would want too. Last time Islamabad negotiated with the Taliban in Waziristan, it agreed to remove its checkposts and virtually leave the territory to those patronised by Al Qaeda.
What Al Qaeda wants is territory from where it can operate freely at the global level. (Already most of the bombers in Europe are trained in Waziristan.) Defeats suffered by Pakistani security forces have created a fait accompli of what in old parlance was called loss of territory. The instrument of control over this territory is sought through the enforcement of a sharia that differs a great deal from the "inclusive" sharia in force in the country. Constitutional amendments have set up a Federal Shariat Court with powers of "reverse legislation" by striking down any law found repugnant to Islam. The MMA government had tried to part company with the constitutional sharia of the rest of the country through what it called the Hasba Bill. This is now the norm that Lal Masjid, backed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, wants to impose in the capital itself.
That Al Qaeda is in search of a state of its own is known to the world. The last time it tried to gain a foothold inside a state was in Somalia in 2006. The sharia there was of the Arab variety and very close to what the Taliban want. The Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), dispensing a wide variety of adjudication based on differing but legitimate sources of jurisprudence, set up its own legally fractured government, only to arouse alarm in the neighbourhood. The United States got "Christian" Ethiopia to invade Somalia and put the Islamic warriors - some of them hailing from Pakistan - to flight. The case of Pakistan will greatly differ in detail but the general drift is the same. An invasion will target the "lost territories" as the Pakistan army watches.
The latest development in this direction of invited or uninvited "intervention-in-failed-state" development has come in the shape of the "offer" of US forces "to fight the Taliban elements in the Tribal Areas and Swat" by the US Central Command (Centcom) chief, Admiral William J Fallon, to President Musharraf. It is quite clear what direction the national crisis is taking. The central concern is not democracy and civil-military relations but the survival of the state and, ironically, within the consensus that wishes to ignore the state are also those who actually want the federation to come to an end.
The End
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).