[Marxism] Taliban Exploit Class Rifts to Gain Ground in Pakistan

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times, April 17, 2009
Taliban Exploit Class Rifts to Gain Ground in Pakistan
By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The Taliban have advanced deeper into Pakistan by 
engineering a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a 
small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants, according 
to government officials and analysts here.

The strategy cleared a path to power for the Taliban in the Swat Valley, 
where the government allowed Islamic law to be imposed this week, and it 
carries broad dangers for the rest of Pakistan, particularly the 
militants’ main goal, the populous heartland of Punjab Province.

In Swat, accounts from those who have fled now make clear that the 
Taliban seized control by pushing out about four dozen landlords who 
held the most power.

To do so, the militants organized peasants into armed gangs that became 
their shock troops, the residents, government officials and analysts said.

The approach allowed the Taliban to offer economic spoils to people 
frustrated with lax and corrupt government even as the militants imposed 
a strict form of Islam through terror and intimidation.

“This was a bloody revolution in Swat,” said a senior Pakistani official 
who oversees Swat, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of 
retaliation by the Taliban. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it sweeps the 
established order of Pakistan.”

The Taliban’s ability to exploit class divisions adds a new dimension to 
the insurgency and is raising alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which 
remains largely feudal.

Unlike India after independence in 1947, Pakistan maintained a narrow 
landed upper class that kept its vast holdings while its workers 
remained subservient, the officials and analysts said. Successive 
Pakistani governments have since failed to provide land reform and even 
the most basic forms of education and health care. Avenues to 
advancement for the vast majority of rural poor do not exist.

Analysts and other government officials warn that the strategy executed 
in Swat is easily transferable to Punjab, saying that the province, 
where militant groups are already showing strength, is ripe for the same 
social upheavals that have convulsed Swat and the tribal areas.

Mahboob Mahmood, a Pakistani-American lawyer and former classmate of 
President Obama’s, said, “The people of Pakistan are psychologically 
ready for a revolution.”

Sunni militancy is taking advantage of deep class divisions that have 
long festered in Pakistan, he said. “The militants, for their part, are 
promising more than just proscriptions on music and schooling,” he said. 
“They are also promising Islamic justice, effective government and 
economic redistribution.”

The Taliban strategy in Swat, an area of 1.3 million people with fertile 
orchards, vast plots of timber and valuable emerald mines, unfolded in 
stages over five years, analysts said.

The momentum of the insurgency built in the past two years, when the 
Taliban, reinforced by seasoned fighters from the tribal areas with 
links to Al Qaeda, fought the Pakistani Army to a standstill, said a 
Pakistani intelligence agent who works in the Swat region.

The insurgents struck at any competing point of power: landlords and 
elected leaders — who were usually the same people — and an underpaid 
and unmotivated police force, said Khadim Hussain, a linguistics and 
communications professor at Bahria University in Islamabad, the capital.

At the same time, the Taliban exploited the resentments of the landless 
tenants, particularly the fact that they had many unresolved cases 
against their bosses in a slow-moving and corrupt justice system, Mr. 
Hussain and residents who fled the area said.

Their grievances were stoked by a young militant, Maulana Fazlullah, who 
set up an FM radio station in 2004 to appeal to the disenfranchised. The 
broadcasts featured easy-to-understand examples using goats, cows, milk 
and grass. By 2006, Mr. Fazlullah had formed a ragtag force of landless 
peasants armed by the Taliban, said Mr. Hussain and former residents of 
Swat.

At first, the pressure on the landlords was subtle. One landowner was 
pressed to take his son out of an English-speaking school offensive to 
the Taliban. Others were forced to make donations to the Taliban.

Then, in late 2007, Shujaat Ali Khan, the richest of the landowners, his 
brothers and his son, Jamal Nasir, the mayor of Swat, became targets.

After Shujaat Ali Khan, a senior politician in the Pakistan Muslim 
League-Q, narrowly missed being killed by a roadside bomb, he fled to 
London. A brother, Fateh Ali Mohammed, a former senator, left, too, and 
now lives in Islamabad. Mr. Nasir also fled.

Later, the Taliban published a “most wanted” list of 43 prominent names, 
said Muhammad Sher Khan, a landlord who is a politician with the 
Pakistan Peoples Party, and whose name was on the list. All those named 
were ordered to present themselves to the Taliban courts or risk being 
killed, he said. “When you know that they will hang and kill you, how 
will you dare go back there?” Mr. Khan, hiding in Punjab, said in a 
telephone interview. “Being on the list meant ‘Don’t come back to Swat.’ ”

One of the main enforcers of the new order was Ibn-e-Amin, a Taliban 
commander from the same area as the landowners, called Matta. The fact 
that Mr. Amin came from Matta, and knew who was who there, put even more 
pressure on the landowners, Mr. Hussain said.

According to Pakistani news reports, Mr. Amin was arrested in August 
2004 on suspicion of having links to Al Qaeda and was released in 
November 2006. Another Pakistani intelligence agent said Mr. Amin often 
visited a madrasa in North Waziristan, the stronghold of Al Qaeda in the 
tribal areas, where he apparently received guidance.

Each time the landlords fled, their tenants were rewarded. They were 
encouraged to cut down the orchard trees and sell the wood for their own 
profit, the former residents said. Or they were told to pay the rent to 
the Taliban instead of their now absentee bosses.

Two dormant emerald mines have reopened under Taliban control. The 
militants have announced that they will receive one-third of the revenues.

Since the Taliban fought the military to a truce in Swat in February, 
the militants have deepened their approach and made clear who is in charge.

When provincial bureaucrats visit Mingora, Swat’s capital, they must now 
follow the Taliban’s orders and sit on the floor, surrounded by Taliban 
bearing weapons, and in some cases wearing suicide bomber vests, the 
senior provincial official said.

In many areas of Swat the Taliban have demanded that each family give up 
one son for training as a Taliban fighter, said Mohammad Amad, executive 
director of a nongovernmental group, the Initiative for Development and 
Empowerment Axis.

A landlord who fled with his family last year said he received a 
chilling message last week. His tenants called him in Peshawar, the 
capital of North-West Frontier Province, which includes Swat, to tell 
him his huge house was being demolished, he said in an interview here.

The most crushing news was about his finances. He had sold his fruit 
crop in advance, though at a quarter of last year’s price. But even that 
smaller yield would not be his, his tenants said, relaying the Taliban 
message. The buyer had been ordered to give the money to the Taliban 
instead.