Why the Chinese?

Friday’s Dawn capsuled Pakistan’s post-Lal Masjid days into figures: “The series of bomb attacks mostly targeting the security forces has claimed more than 285 lives...

Friday’s Dawn capsuled Pakistan’s post-Lal Masjid days into figures: “The series of bomb attacks mostly targeting the security forces has claimed more than 285 lives this month — at least 180 since July 14 alone.” Thursday saw three suicide bombings taking a combined toll of more than 50 lives. At Hub, Balochistan, 50 km from Karachi, a car bomber rammed into a security vehicle accompanying a convoy of Chinese mining workers, killing seven security personnel and 23 bystanders. Another targeted personnel guarding a police parade ground in Hangu in the NWFP. A third bombing in a mosque compound in Kohat, also in NWFP. These followed a wave of bombings in, most notably, Waziristan, NWFP and Islamabad.

“Why are the Chinese being targeted?” the Daily Times asked in its Friday editorial, concentrating on the first incident. “The Chinese are being killed in the north because their killing hurts the government in Islamabad the most. It was the abduction of the Chinese nationals by the Lal Masjid vigilantes which finally forced President Musharraf to take action against the seminary. An additional factor in both regions is the factor of ‘trespass’ into territories that the tribal rebels wish to cordon off as their ‘no-go’ territory. In Balochistan, the Chinese are being seen as a part of the international conspiracy — allegedly led by America — to deprive the Baloch by ‘globalising’ their natural resources. The Chinese are in the crossfire, so to speak, in the war that the Baloch are waging against the state of Pakistan.” Besides the strain this may put on bilateral relations, the paper is worried that these incidents will discourage Chinese enterprise, more and more of it now in the private sector.

Those political agents

On Monday, Dawn reported on a statement release by the local Taliban announcing the end of a peace deal signed with the government in September 2006 in North Waziristan. The report explained that as per the deal, the government had withdrawn army and paramilitary troops from check posts in the region and returned to the militants the weapons seized by security forces during operations. The Taliban and tribesmen, for their part, had committed to taking action against foreigners in the area. The Taliban were also to desist from setting up a parallel administration and launching attacks on the security forces. Recent attacks on security personnel and government moves to revive deployment in the region put the final strain on the deal.

On Tuesday, the Daily Times examined the effects on the office of the political agent: “When the Pakistan army moved into the tribal areas in 2001, it sent into eclipse the institution of the political agent which served the state well as it refused to try and ‘detribalise’ the territorial entities called FATA. On the contrary, the status of the political agent should have been enhanced so that he could underpin the military operation with political legitimacy. His scouts should have been beefed up and better arms matching those of the Taliban should have been provided to the paramilitary force working under him. Instead, the military commanders virtually replaced him, even to the extent of granting construction contracts to the locals to buy their loyalty. The parallel weakening of the commissionerates in the provinces further debilitated the political agent. Therefore, after the army withdrew in 2006, the political agent was hardly an institution that could be dusted off the shelf and asked to assume its old responsibilities. The elders he used to mobilise to give legitimacy to the tough laws imposed through a special penal code too had either been warned off or killed by the Taliban. So there is nothing on the ground in FATA to stem the tide of chaos coming towards the settled areas of the NWFP. If the government wants to take the field against the Taliban it will have to deploy troops on a significant scale.”

President’s promise

In such a difficult week and with judgment in the chief justice case expected to go against the government, rumours of a state of emergency being imposed gained circulation. In the Daily Times on July 19, Najam Sethi reported on President Pervez Musharraf’s meeting with editors at his Camp Office in Rawalpindi. Musharraf ruled out any move towards a state of emergency and said general and presidential elections would be held “as per the Constitution”. He hoped, wrote Sethi, that the elections would “return moderate forces to parliament”, with whom he’d work to consolidate a national consensus on imbuing credibility into the political system and countering the forces of extremism.