comments (Fall 2009)

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Talibanistan: The Talibs at Home

Nicholas Schmidle

About a year ago, while sitting at my home in Washington, DC, I found myself with a sort of delayed-stress longing for the Taliban. The desire stemmed from an overseas dispute, a business deal gone bad. Back in January 2008, I’d been forced into a hasty transaction—shortly after five policemen knocked at my front door in Islamabad and announced their intent to kick me and my wife out of Pakistan. We had an hour to leave. Fortunately, through some well-connected friends, we managed to get 48 hours to pack our apartment into boxes, find a good home for our kitten, Cricket, and sell the four-cylinder Pajero Mini SUV that we had used to scoot around Islamabad for the past year . . .

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The "judicial" role of the Taliban is common-talk in Pakistan. However, shariah courts have been available even before the Taliban gained traction. In Swat there was clearly a vacuum of authority which encouraged the Taliban. However, there was also a local land rights struggle which fueled the conflict. Schmidle is right that many Pakistanis consider the Talib as "incorruptible" quick and dirty dispute settlers. However, the solution to the matter still lies first in education. The mere fact that people were able to countenance quick, dirty and errant justice shows the problem of rural illiteracy. The US is best suited to improve literacy in rural areas and provide apprenticeship programs for youth to keep them out of trouble. US involvement in any judicial reform is far more likely to spur conspiracy theories. Perhaps the lawyers movement that got Musharraf out can channel its efforts more so on rural implementation.

Posted by Saleem H. Ali | October 5, 2009 10:44:35 PM EDT

Nicholas Schmidle's commentary regarding the Taliban syndrome in Pakistan seems positively realistic and true. The core fact regarding the Talibanisation-cult in Pakistan is that the stemming roots of Talbanistaion seems to have been growing since the time of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, a time when both the US and the Pakistani governments promptly supported to establishing the militants' network against the Russians.The irony is that the expansion of this negative attitude of religious militancy once got the strategic support from the US-Pakistani establishments. Yet to combat against this attitude of religious militancy requires a compact strategy through which the tendency of religious extremism can be minimized. The most important weapon to use against the very process of Talbanisation is to provide means of literacy and education in the downtrodden areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. NWFP, Baluchistan and the southern Punjab(the backwater-Pakistan)immediately needs to have the power of education. Only and only this meaningful policy can be instrumental in combating Talbainsation in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.The use of power by any means, can not provide durable results.

Posted by Syed Qamar Afzal Rizvi | October 6, 2009 12:22:57 AM EDT

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