White flag over Swat

Over the last week as the government was seized of political developments, the mountainous valley of Swat seemed to have passed under the suzerainty of rebel cleric Maulana Fazlullah. By Thursday, his Taliban militants had captured, up in the north, the picturesque Kalam and hoisted a white flag over the police station.
With Swat under his control, Fazlullah's spokesman Mulla Sirajuddin told local reporters that the next "destinations" of his leader included the whole of Malakand Division and further beyond encompassing literally the entire region between the River Indus and the Afghanistan border with Chitral.
The debacles suffered by government troops at the hands of ragtag holy warriors were stunning, replete with stories of humiliating surrenders. Isn't it surprising that some seven to eight thousand paramilitary personnel, fully backed by helicopter gunships, lost town after town without giving fight to Fazlullah's fighters.
The newspaper accounts of the skirmishes between the government troops and militants tell of the huge collateral damage in terms of loss of life and property, displacement of people and collapse of tourism industry which is the main source of livelihood for the people of Swat valley.
These reverses are all the more puzzling because the militants enjoyed only conditional support of the local population, in that while the locals agreed with Maulana Fazlullah's mission to enforce Shariah they disagreed with his other activities and accused him of sheltering drug traffickers.
This is not the first time that religious extremism surfaced in Swat. In the 90s, Fazlullah's father-in-law, Maulana Sufi Mohammad, had largely succeeded in enforcing Shariah, with the benign acquiescence of the then government of Pakistan People's Party. But for his quixotic decision to troop his followers into Afghanistan in support of the beleaguered Taliban regime, consequent to which hundreds of them were either killed or imprisoned, he would have been still around calling the shots.
Way back in 1829, the followers of Saiyid Ahmad Shah of Bareilly, dubbed by the British as Hindustani fanatics, had set up their colony in Swat, but did not survive there long enough as his detractors chased them out, killing the Saiyid at Balakot in 1831. A revolt by their remnants in 1863 was crushed by the British who now controlled the NWFP.
In 1897, Mulla Mustan (Mad Mulla) staged an uprising but ended on a bloody note. It would not be wrong to say that behind the idyllic serenity of Swat lies the insatiable desire of its residents to do things in their own way. Maulana Sufi's movement was popular for the people that were fed up with the corrupt local bureaucracy and courts and were convinced that only Islamic laws could provide them quick justice.
Maulana Fazlullah also raised the same slogan but the then MMA government just ignored him. Meanwhile, the Lal Masjid incident took place, in which a number of victims were from Malakand Division, which lent Maulana Fazlullah a popular platform to carry forward his campaign.
The decision clinched at the National Security Council meeting last week to send regular troops to control militancy, perhaps should have been taken early this year, or at the latest when a suicide bomber killed more than a score of recruits at an army training centre.
That was followed by a number of incidents of violence in Swat, seriously undermining the writ of the state. The dispatch of paramilitary troops by the NWFP caretaker government last month - the move militants responded to by deadly suicide bombing of a military vehicle killing 17 members of a security force - to say the least was too haphazardly planned and conducted.
The adversary is battle-hardened, familiar with terrain and adequately armed for mountain warfare. Then, there is a history that stands at its back. In the short run, the battle in Swat is expected to be tough for regular troops trained as they are in conventional warfare.
But, it has to be won, for what is at stake is the writ of the state of Pakistan. No government worth its salt can afford to be oblivious of its responsibility to ensure that the writ of the state runs, and effectively, to all four corners of the country.