The Hindu Business Line : Mehsud goes, but not his ideology

The horrifying truth that Pakistanis outside the tribal areas of its north-western region are realising is that terrorists like Baitullah Mehsud have become role models for young Pakistanis, says RASHEEDA BHAGAT.

When the Government higher secondary school in the Barikot area of Swat reopened on August 1 following the flushing out of militants and the return of the displaced people to the region after the Pakistan army swung into action to clear the region of the influence of the Pakistan Taliban, it missed two of its brilliant people.

The first, says a report in the Pakistani daily Jang, was its beloved teacher Fazal Jabbar, who was killed along with relatives when a mortar fell on his house in May 2009. While fateha (prayers) were offered for the soul of the teacher, there could only be surmises on the disappearance of one of the school’s brilliant alumni, Yousuf Khan, who had joined the Taliban last year and was feared dead too in one of the recent suicide missions.

The report quoted the school principal as saying: “He was such a brilliant student ... I can’t believe he can join the militants because he had no such inclination during his school days.”

In the backdrop of the reported killing of Baitullah Mehsud, the dreaded chief of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in a US drone attack in South Waziristan last week, the horrifying truth that Pakistanis outside the tribal areas of its north-western region are realising is that terrorists like him have become role models for young Pakistanis in the areas that the Pakistan Taliban were officially commanding until recently. And there is little doubt that it will be a long, long haul before the Pakistan military or its law-enforcing agencies regain hold over this area. And that, by the way, is an optimistic scenario.

As a teacher of the Swat school recalled, even brilliant students like Yousuf, who could have gone ahead for higher education, found a lot of charm in joining the Taliban, “holding guns and stopping and searching people on the roads.”

But then, unfortunately, the power of the gun that lures youngsters like Yousuf into the Taliban’s clutches is a short-term phenomenon. Ultimately, such teenagers, after they have undergone their share of brainwashing and basic training in suicide bombing, are used as cannon for the Taliban’s machinery of hatred.

Baitullah Mehsud himself was wanted for umpteen attacks and suicide bombings which have devastated Pakistan in the last couple of years. His most high-profile victim was former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto; and with her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, being at the helm of affairs in Pakistan as its President, obviously the Pakistan intelligence mechanisms have fully cooperated with the US in pinpointing Mehsud’s whereabouts.

Curious twist

For those of us who have rebelled over long years at the craze for a male heir in families in South Asia, reports of Mehsud’s whereabouts at the time of his death are a bonus. Apparently Mehsud’s first wife could bear only four daughters, a huge embarrassment for one who was commandeering a tribal region where only the birth of sons is greeted with gunfire and celebration. So he took a second and younger wife in the hope she would bear him a son.

Reports coming out of South Waziristan say Mehsud was enjoying the hospitality of his father-in-law, to whose house he had gone to spend the night, when the US drone got its prized target.

But even Pakistanis who have cheered the news of Mehsud’s death, as he was the terrorist who had contributed the most in pushing their country towards the road to disaster by engineering innumerable suicide attacks, know very well that the end of one Mehsud is not going to change anything overnight.

Apparently hundreds of teenagers like Yousuf have joined the Pakistan Taliban with the intent of taking revenge not only against the US but also their own administration and the people who consider the US their friend or who adopt a western outlook and lifestyle. Women, in particular, are the object of their hatred because they seek education, economic empowerment and dress in “un-Islamic clothes”! Now many of these teenagers who had joined the TPP are missing; their parents have no clue where they have gone, or if different parts of their bodies lay strewn near a recent blast site.

Battle for Mehsud’s legacy

How important it is to grab Mehsud’s legacy and, of course, the power that comes with it can be seen from the war that broke out immediately between two potential Taliban candidates to replace Mehsud, even while doubts were being expressed that he had actually been killed. It seems that Hakimullah Mehsud and Wali ur Rehman Mehsud, potential candidates who wanted to become the next TTP chief, have both been killed. A news agency reported that this happened at a TTP meeting at an undisclosed location in South Waziristan last week; differences had cropped up between the two leaders after the death of Baitullah. Even as the meeting decided to nominate Hakimullah Mehsud as Baitullah’s successor, the rival leader’s group opened gunfire and killed the nominated man. There are claims that later Wali was also killed by the other gang.

If powerful leaders among the TTP are willing to put their necks on the block in order to assume leadership of this dreaded wing of the Taliban, the extent of the Pakistan Taliban’s reach and influence in the country, particularly its north-western region, can be imagined. It is well known that the Taliban, who were once nurtured by the Pakistan military at the behest of the US and to take on the Soviet troops in Afghanistan, still has supporters and well-wishers within the Pakistan military establishment. After all, the ISI has used a section of such “freedom fighters” to foment trouble in our Kashmir, and would be loath to lose influence over such a handy tool that can be readily and effectively used for fomenting trouble when the need arises.

In getting Baitullah Mehsud’s scalp the Pakistan and US intelligence agencies have obviously worked together closely. A PPP-led administration in Pakistan could ill-afford to let the killer of the party’s charismatic leader get away scot-free. But it is doubtful that the US will continue to get such touching support from Pakistan’s intelligence on all matters concerning terrorism, be it in Afghanistan, India or even Pakistan itself.

Mehsud may be gone, and so also two other powerful TTP leaders who hoped to take his place. But the dangerous ideology that he represented and which youngsters like Yousuf found so enticing that they were willing to give up their families and their future in order to walk the dangerous and destructive path etched out by him, and others like him, lives on.

More than its neighbours, Pakistan should be worried and tackle this scourge with all the seriousness and means at its command. Selective cooperation and intelligence sharing will not help; the suicide bombers turned out by the TTP’s terror factory might succeed in creating a few craters in India or cause the death of some American or NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. But the devastation they can cause on its own soil, by poisoning Pakistan’s own youth against its administration and people, holds out frightening prospects for the future of Pakistan.

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in and blfeedback@thehindu.co.in

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