Militants’ bid for power

Sufi Mohammad, the man on whom the government pinned its hopes after entering into a peace deal with the extremists, has declared that democracy amounts to kufr. Concurrently, referring to the ‘security forces and the rulers of Pakistan’ as the militants’ target, a TTP spokesman has said that the ANP that heads the NWFP government will not be harmed if it supports the insurgents but would be targeted if it sided with the government — presumably the central government of which it is also a part.

Taken in conjunction with Sufi Mohammad’s earlier rejection of the country’s constitution and judicial system, these comments should put paid to any doubts about the TTP-TNSM lust for power. The gauntlet they have thrown down is a bid to replace the country’s codes of judicial, governmental and administrative conduct with their own perverted ‘system’.

This observation is substantiated by Sufi Mohammad’s recent comments on the treatment of women. Let alone their right to lead their own lives, the Sharia system he envisages is one where women will not even have access to basic medical care: he frowns upon the idea that male medics would treat them, and indicated that no woman would be allowed the education that may help her tend to her sisters. Effectively, this would allow Sufi Mohammad’s ideologues to have total control over half the country’s population whose status would thus be reduced to that of chattel.

Having capitulated on the Nizam-i-Adl ordinance, and indeed in attempting a peace deal through the suspect offices of a controversial religious leader, the government may have shot itself in the foot. In the attempt to gain control now, it must also undo the damage that was done earlier.

The NWFP information minister claims that it is the provincial government’s prerogative to appoint qazis to the Darul Qaza and that militants refusing to lay down their arms after the formation of the court would be declared rebels. But the rebels are far from apprehensive. Not only did the TTP renege on its part of the bargain by not disarming its members, Sufi Mohammad stated baldly that delegating qazis’ power to judges went against the Sharia and that what was required were qazis fulfilling the criteria of Islamic law.

This constitutes a bid to remove the matter from the elected government’s purview since upon available evidence it is only what Sufi Mohammad and his supporters deem Islamic that conforms to the Sharia. The government and the security apparatus’ weak-kneed approach has already allowed great havoc to be wrought. Further dilly-dallying on the militants’ challenge to state authority and not pursuing an effective military and civilian strategy to rein in the extremists will worsen matters. Time in which the tide can be turned back is fast running out.