Attempts by the Pakistan military to stop the Taliban and their allies advancing through the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan have led to more than 2 million people fleeing their homes. Yet deadly bomb attacks on civilian targets around the country proclaim the militants’ defiance and relief workers report that religious fanaticism continues to spread writes Kathy Lowe.

‘While the army is flushing the Taliban out of (the) Swat (valley), the Jihadi infractructure – training camps, seminaries, newspapers, charities; the fronts for the Taliban – remain intact in other parts of the country,’ says the Pakistan Labor Relief Campaign.

With US/NATO forces in Afghanistan currently losing ground to the Taliban and the warlords who support them, Western powers are finding Taliban insurgency in Pakistan far too close for comfort. US-operated drones regularly fire missiles at suspected militant hideouts in the tribal belt along the Afghan-Pakistan border. But the current military operation to rein in the Taliban came only after Washington, a key ally and source of billions in aid to Pakistan, leaned on Pakistan President Asif Ali Zadari to take decisive action.

In April Zadari tried to appease the militants and bring to an end two years of conflict that had cost an estimated 1,500 lives. He ratified a disastrous accord with the Taliban introducing sharia law (the Islamic system of justice) in Swat and seven adjoining districts known as Malakand.

This “peace deal”, which received cross-party support in parliament at the time, only emboldened the Taliban fighters further. They proceeded to launch an assault on nearby Buner district, an area of half a million people. According to the Guardian, ‘Gun-toting militants looted aid agency offices, stole western-funded vehicles and forced police to retreat into their stations.’

The Taliban are fighting to hold on to the valuable emerald mines of Swat and rich sources of marble in Buner which they have exploited as a source of income. There are fears that they could also control Mardan, the most fertile part of the Province which opens the gate to Peshwar, used for US supply lines to its troops in Afghanistan.

Accounts of what happens when the Taliban impose their brutal version of Islamic law have begun to unsettle even some Pakistan generals and politicians who see them as allies. The agency Human Rights Watch reports that over large swathes of the NWFP the Taliban “imposed their authority through summary executions – including beheadings – of state officials and political opponents, and intimidation of the population”. Polio immunisation programmes were halted, non-governmental organisations expelled; music and film banned, and stores trading in them destroyed. All men were required to grow beards.

Women were, and are, a prime target. The international women’s rights organisation Equality Now estimates that more than 100 schools for girls were torched or blasted in the Swat valley and other tribal areas, denying the right to a basic education to as many as 100,000 girls.

Women have been ordered to wear the veil and forbidden to leave their homes unless escorted by male family members. As a warning, a video was released in April of a teenage girl from Swat being flogged by the Taliban as a punishment for an alleged sexual misdemeanour. Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan defended the punishment and said the girl should have been stoned.

Muslim Khan has also made clear that the fighters’ ambitions extend way beyond control of the judicial system. Their goal, he told reporters, was the establishment of an Islamic caliphate – first in Pakistan, then across the Muslim world. ‘Democracy is a system for European countries. It is not for Muslims,’ he said. ‘This is not about justice. It should be in education, health, economics. Everything should be under sharia.’

The Labor Relief Campaign, (LRC), a coalition of trade union, education, youth and women workers’ organisations led by the socialist Labour Party Pakistan, wants to counter both religious fanaticism and state repression.

Their campaign, the activists explain, is about much more than providing humanitarian help for the internally displaced persons, absolutely essential though this work is. ‘We are unequivocally opposed to the war because a military campaign like this will guarantee the violation of human rights for generations to come.’

A key aspect of the LRC campaign is to intensify the ideological battle against the growing influence of the Taliban, “neo-fascists who have become a great danger to our existence and must be opposed”.

Such a fight is a tough challenge. In an Islamic state where anti-US sentiments are deep-rooted (and further fuelled by the drone attacks which have killed hundreds of civilians), the Taliban are often seen as anti-imperialists and their excesses overlooked.

The LRC strategy is to build and strengthen labour and social organisations in the Taliban-dominated areas through local defence committees. Several new trade unions and peasant organisations have been set up and networks reinforced through a paper, Mazdoor Jeddojuhd, in Pushto, the local language in the NWFP. The paper has won the support of over 200 poets, writers, trades union, social and women activists and publishes the activities and views of the labour and social movements in the province. It is seen as a concrete way to counter the religious fanatics.

Ultimately, argues the LRC, the fight against religious extremism can only be successful when the basic problems of the working class in social, political and economic fields are solved. “In addition to developing a system of free education with a secular syllabus for all, this means an end to feudalism, implementation of land reform and an end to the US occupation of Afghanistan.”

Read more:
http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1666
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/pakistan
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/
http://www.equalitynow.org/english/index.html
http://www.hrw.org/en/asia/pakistan