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WEEKLY
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| ‘Israelisation’ of Waziristan and Tank |
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Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Ikram Hoti
ISLAMABAD: A sort of ‘mini-Israel’ is emerging in Waziristan and Tank areas, where foreigners stand their ground after relishing property they bought during the Afghan war and are now under threat from the Taliban and the Malik forces that have turned against them under the slogan ‘expel the terrorist foreigners’.
“They created their own mini government, set up courts that executed local opponents and acted the same way the settlers in the occupied areas of Palestine did with the help of the Tel Aviv government,” said a senior government official who met this scribe in Kohat.
He was visiting the area in search of a house where he could lodge his family after shifting them from Tank, where Talibanisation last week spread with a more ferocious display of violence than in any other area.
The News checked the facts that reached Islamabad from these areas and found that affluent settlers from Uzbek and Tajik areas of Afghanistan during anti-Soviet struggle had migrated to Fata to avoid being attacked. “The number of these families, in dozens during the 1980s, swelled in the 1990s and more had been migrating after the frequent change of governments in Kabul,” said the official.
When approached for confirmation, a senior journalist, Mobarak Ali, who has been interviewing Taliban and Mahsud/Wazir elders over the weekend in Tank and Waziristan, said: “I have heard of the Uzbeks and Tajiks holding large properties of which some were bought, some gifted by the local people who entered into relations with them, while some were taken forcibly.”
He also confirmed that the internecine mini war going on for the past four to five months has spread because of the involvement of families that had entered into social relations with the foreigners. They were not isolated but had local support, which has made the whole affair very complex.
The properties they acquired were gradually developed into model farms. This became the bone of contention between the settlers and the locals. The locals, including those dealing with the foreigners, played protectors of the Uzbeks and Tajiks against those who were allegedly trying to malign them.
The Mahsud tribe which became proactive in a clannish way against the foreigners began calling them “settlers” and their relations as protectors of occupiers, a couple of years ago.
The Tank settlers in DI Khan and Kohat indicated that the Uzbeks and Tajiks were being looked upon just the way the Palestinians looked at Israeli settlers in the disputed territories. They planned to unleash a propaganda campaign with an armed threat, especially after the settlers set up their supra-government courts and began executing locals that were either causing disturbance in the area or were threatening to expel them (settlers) out of the region.
They further said the locals felt like underdogs in their rise and forming of a force of “settlers” and their Wazir, Toori, Mangal, Burki and Mahsud relations who share a third generation of youths — the mixed blood of Pukhtun and settlers.
They found the Taliban entering from Afghanistan and those emerging locally as their natural allies against the settlers. And when the government forces attacked the foreigners and the locals about six months ago, there began a movement wherein the locals allied with the government functionaries due to their grouse about the settlers.
In the midst of all these developments, the Taliban became very powerful as they found anarchy a favourable breeding ground in the region and took advantage of the armed struggle between the warring factions.
The Taliban learnt to set up local courts and they also promised the agitating tribal elders that they would extend them support against the foreigners for favours like arms, ammunition, sanctuary and even money.
The most lucrative offer for the local tribes fighting the foreigners was the promise of armed protection by the Taliban, as the settlers had been amassing deadly weapons. While the Afghan government had been raising hue and cry over the settlers, indulging in anti-government and anti-Nato insurgencies, the settlers were in fact facing the locals that found the government and the Taliban as their allies.
When asked whether the Taliban were causing cross-border trouble that was being blamed on settlers, the locals said neither these Taliban nor the settlers could be so powerful as to fight armies like Nato. Moreover, they were preoccupied with their own local issues and could not be contenders of power in the two countries.
Most of these Taliban are locals seeking control of the area to set up a traditional form of government the way the Taliban did in Kabul.
Their influence is spreading only because the local people are thrilled to see that the Political Agent offices are crumbling and they can no longer be arrested under the Frontier Crime Regulations (FCR) — the black and coercive law which is a colonial legacy perpetrated to torture tribesmen and challenge their hurt honour.
The fresh turn the situation took a couple of months ago is now becoming central to the Talibanisation issue. The Taliban and the local youths are taking over the entire sub-region, and are taking sides with the tribes that are up in arms against the foreigners that are being treated the same way as the Palestinians treat Israeli settlers.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
