Guardians of God: Inside the Religious Mind of the Pakistani Taliban
Mona Kanwal Sheikh’s work was published in 2016 by the Oxford University Press. The efforts she made to do this work are undeniably stupendous. Being a young woman she extensively travelled in Pakistan’s tribal areas, notorious for misogyny, to meet Taliban adherents and for the lurking presence of frightening intelligence men; to gather information through the people and the Taliban’s published materials; recorded speeches and ideas of the leadership. But she exhorts that being a female it did not cause her any trouble. She had hours of conversation with Taliban militants and ate mangoes with them. She interviewed two activists, Muslim Khan and Matiul Haq. In the prologue she writes, “My impression was that Taliban adherents wanted to talk to me because they expected a sympathetic portrayal”.
She writes her book portrays post-2001 Pakistani Taliban generation which arose in reaction to US-NATO invasion of Afghanistan. She writes “the overall objective of this book is to open a window to the narratives that flourished among the Pakistani Taliban adherents when the movement was established, and the narratives that have continued to strengthen the existence of Taliban-affiliated movement in the years after the establishment”.
The book is very explicit about the motive behind the Pakistani Taliban movement, a mission to defend God. It should be noted that this was not the force like the rise of the Afghan Taliban although they studied in Pakistani madrasas. The Afghan Taliban rose in 1992 not as an Islamic movement but for protection of Pakistani merchandise passing through Afghanistan to Central Asian States. Then Interior Minister of Pakistan Gen (Retd.) Naseerullah Babar called them “our boys”. It was in 1996 that Pakistan Army helped them take control of Afghanistan where they imposed medieval laws in the name of Sharia. After the overthrow of their government in Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban went to Pakistan tribal areas, Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province (now called Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) for safe havens. Here started a wave of Talibanisation as a protest against the United States’ action in Afghanistan and against Pakistan’s support to this action. Then US President George Bush called this action as a “Crusade” against terror. The word crusade strengthened the propaganda that the West was at war with Islam.
The Taliban cried that Islam is in danger but the author of “Guardians of God” does not give any clear cut idea, despite all her interactions with them, what is the Taliban strategy to fight for Islam. Author Mona Kanwal Sheikh was told by Taliban activist Muslim Khan, in the course of her interview with him and other Taliban adherents that Islam was under systematic attacks from the West. She was told they were engaged in defensive jihad. The obvious question arises: But against whom? The perceived enemy is identified, but the Pakistani Taliban’s “defensive jihad” has become “offensive jihad” against the innocent citizens of Pakistan and against children and their schools. In their wrath against education the Taliban defy Prophet Mohammad’s advice to his followers to get education even if you have to go to China.
The Taliban have identified their perceived enemy -West- but cannot act against them.
Here they are like William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” who knows who poisoned his father but cannot take revenge. He lets out his passion of revenge through soliloquy. The Taliban let out their anger by killing their innocent compatriots. But betraying her indulgence towards the Taliban, the author is hesitant to call them terrorists although she has mentioned their links with terrorist organisations like Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). All these terror outfits invoke Islam as the justification of their acts. They believe their interpretation of God’s laws represents authentic Islam and thus indisputable. But, Mona Sheikh writes that the Taliban leaders and followers are often poorly educated in the corpus of Islamic studies. These terror outfits never had strong ideological or intellectual roots while Islamic revivalism in Muslim countries has often been based on a tradition of scholarly debate and writing.
Mona Sheikh concludes by suggesting the Taliban can be mainstreamed through peace negotiations: “My analysis has shown that the Taliban acts of violence are just about as much about the fear of the elimination of Islam as about a missionary zeal to spread the true faith”. She continues: “The Taliban activists have a rationale for their actions that we night find odd, but that does not make it irrelevant. To assume that they are devoid of rationality and reason is itself an irrational view”. The Taliban have their vision of authority which is different from that of the West. To effect a change in pattern of the Taliban’s behaviour “we should change our own pattern of behaviour”, she writes and adds military actions against them have proved counterproductive in the past. Her view is that the Taliban movement has come to stay. It may seem bizarre to imagine the Pakistani Taliban movement as part of the political conversation in Pakistan. But she writes, the Taliban are already in relationship with the SSP which is both militant and political and the Taliban adherents support Maulana Fazlur Rahman-led Jamiat-ul-Ulema-Islam(JUI), a large Islamist party which has embraced democracy. This suggests that the Taliban may be willing to engage in mainstream politics directly or indirectly.
Mona Sheikh comes to the point now: Hold talk with the Taliban to bring them to the political mainstream. Hers seems to be an ivory tower view of things in Pakistan. There have been failed attempts to bring them into mainstream politics. The secular Awami National Party (ANP) after it had come to power in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa after the 2008 elections, allowed the Taliban to rule Swat by Sharia. But during their rule, there was no Islamic rule justice or any human rights. In 2014 then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif tried to bring the Taliban into political mainstream through talks at the cost of his relations with the Army. The Taliban half-heartedly agreed but neither side would say what the give-and-take pre-conditions were. These attempts fizzled out when the Army launched Zarb-e-Azb operation in North Waziristan on June 15, 2014. In suggesting talks with the Taliban, the author does not analyse the Taliban failure in Swat nor does she discusses the great divide in the Pakistani society over Sharif’s moves to talk to the Taliban in 2014. She also does not reflect awareness of Pakistan’s Army’s attitude. The Taliban have become used to a wild life which they live by guns and bombs without being answerable. As the latest terror wave in Afghanistan especially in Kabul indicate that the Taliban will thwart any move to make them join any democratic system by insisting on imposing their view of Sharia.
