Message from Bannu

ON July 22, 2024, in response to the government’s announcement that a military operation would be launched in KP, a 45-member jirga of Bannu elders presented a list of 16 demands for the maintenance of peace in Bannu specifically, and KP in general.

Reportedly, the KP Apex Committee, which has members from the provincial government as well as the local military command, accepted these demands. On Aug 4, a jirga committee met to evaluate the implementation of these demands. It stated that only three demands had been implemented till then. The committee pointed out that the government’s delaying tactics would likely aggravate the security situation not only in Bannu, but also in the adjoining districts of North and South Waziristan, as evident in the surge in terrorist attacks in the first half of August.

The jirga’s 16 demands can be divided into four categories — military, the Pakistani Taliban, police, and socioeconomic factors. With regard to the military, the demands comprise three aspects: firm opposition to any large-scale operation; a strong dislike of military tactics in Bannu, such as enforced disappearances; and firm disapproval of the policy of dealing with the TTP by dividing them into the ‘surrendered Taliban’ and the ‘bad Taliban’.

All this reflects a serious disconnect between local civil society and the military on how to deal with the terrorist threat. Continuation of this communication gap is likely to strengthen the TTP’s hands and must be addressed urgently.

Addressing the concerns raised by the jirga can go a long way in restoring confidence in the state.

Regarding the Taliban, the jirga forcefully demanded two things: all centres of surrendered Taliban be ended permanently; and the elimination of “patrolling/ picketing by Taliban forthwith”. Surrendering militants are generally referred to as the ‘good Taliban’, and have been temporarily settled in Bannu’s outskirts. The jirga sees the ‘good Taliban’ as a major part of the problem. Thus, it wants the policy of using the ‘good’ Taliban against the TTP to be re-examined for overall effectiveness and acceptability among the locals.

Similarly, the Taliban’s patrolling, extortion of money and checking of documents challenges the writ of the state, strengthening the impression that the government is either unwilling or incapable of protecting the citizens from the terrorists. This perception seriously dents public support for the counterterrorism (CT) effort, portraying the government as weak and ineffective.

Vis-à-vis the police, the jirga demanded that the main agency responsible for enforcing kinetic measures against the TTP in Bannu specifically, and KP generally, should be the police and not the military. It wanted the police to be empowered and provided resources to enable it to play its role in countering the TTP. This calls for a much-needed shift from the military to the police in decision-making and implementation of the kinetic dimension in KP.

Last but not least, the jirga demanded socioeconomic measures such as the restoration of internet/ mobile phone services in the area, giving “due share in local natural resources, especially gas and minerals, to the people of Bannu”, and improving the local economy by opening the “Ghulam Khan trade route for Afghanistan”. Addressing these concerns can go a long way in restoring the locals’ confidence in the government.

The way forward calls for a four-dimensional response. One, the federal government must honour the commitments it made in 2018 to provide funds to KP to mainstream the Newly Merged Districts, which continue to have extremely poor socioeconomic indicators. Lack of resources for development and security is a major driver of violent extremism in the NMDs, with a spillover effect in adjoining districts like Bannu. Similarly, the demands for reopening the Ghulam Khan trade route and giving local communities a participatory role to benefit from the area’s natural resources should be addressed before it snowballs into a major rallying call — as it has in Balochistan.

Two, the military should realise that KP’s environment has changed radically since Operation Zarb-i-Azb in 2014. After experiencing large-scale suffering, the people have become vocal and are asserting themselves for a say in the CT response for peace in their area. It is time to respect their wishes and make them partners in countering terrorism in the area, both in terms of policy formulation — ‘good Taliban’ versus ’bad Taliban’, negotiations with the Taliban, etc — and tactics — such as the missing persons’ phenomenon. The military’s earlier overbearing presence in CT efforts in the province is no longer likely to be effective: the Bannu jirga drove home this point.

Three, the provincial government is pivotal to the CT effort in KP, and must devise a holistic strategy for dealing with terrorism in the province under two main categories: kinetic and non-kinetic. In the former, the KP government must devise a plan for capacity building of the police and the criminal justice system on an urgent basis. In the non-kinetic area, it must prioritise addressing the socioeconomic grievances raised by the jirga. To plan, coordinate, and implement non-kinetic measures, the provincial government needs a focal institution, just like it has the CTD for implementing kinetic measures.

Last, but not least, acting on the jirga’s demand for the local population to be given a voice in CT efforts, formal structures such as district-level jirgas or a local bodies system to incorporate local inputs into CT must be created. This can be done through provincial legislation.

The significance of the Bannu jirga lies not only in the fact that it enumerates the issues of greatest concern to the people of Bannu, but also that the demands, with local variations, are representative of all other segments of KP and Balochistan, which are bearing the brunt of the terrorist onslaught. Similar voices have been heard from the recently held Swat Qaumi Jirga and the Baloch Yakjehti Committee. Ignoring these demands will only widen the present alienation between the people and the state, depriving the latter of the critical support of local communities in our national CT effort. Therein lies the importance of the Bannu message.

The writer is a former police officer who was Nacta’s first national coordinator.

Published in Dawn, August 31st, 2024

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