Taliban Defeat in North-West Frontier?

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Pakistan's February 18 elections signaled a dramatic shift in Islamist parties' fortunes in the North-West Frontier Province. In the 2002 general election, religious parties won 67 seats in the 99-seat provincial assembly, while in 2008 they won only nine seats. Some commentators have attached great strategic significance to these results. For example, Heritage Foundation research fellow Lisa Curtis wrote that "[p]erhaps the most important outcome" of Pakistan's elections "was the victory of a secular Pashtun party in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) over religious parties sympathetic to the Taliban." The Christian Science Monitor declared that the victorious Awami National Party (ANP) is "expected to marshal all the province's resources - police, politics, and the law - against extremism."

In my latest article, posted this morning at the Middle East Times, I argue that some commentators are overstating the significance of the results:

First, there is already concern in Washington about the approach the winning parties are planning to adopt vis-à-vis the Taliban. Farhana Ali, an associate international policy analyst at the RAND Corporation who recently returned from a 10-day trip to Pakistan, told me that many Pakistanis are fatigued by this war. "They see it as America's war," she said, "but there is a new strand of thought emerging that the Pakistanis need to choose their own strategies." One such strategy that worries many Washington analysts is the new coalition's willingness to negotiate with the Taliban.

The RAND Corporation's Seth Jones told me, "There is a strong desire among even the secular parties to engage in dialogue with militant groups. From a strategic perspective, I don't see this as a major win for the United States."

Second, violence may interrupt any kind of political change. There have been at least three major attacks in the NWFP during the past week, including an attack on a jirga (tribal gathering) in the frontier town of Darra Adamkhel - flouting religious militants' traditional practice of leaving such gatherings untouched by violence. "If law and order is not quickly established," Akbar Ahmed told me, "things will degenerate."

Third, there is a question about how serious the ANP is about combating the Taliban. Ahmed said that while the PPP is "structurally opposed" to the Taliban, nationalist parties are not. "The nationalist parties are as pro-Taliban as the mullahs," he argued, pointing to their shared Pashtun ethnicity. "Commentators saying this is a loss for the Taliban and al-Qaida are so off that it's embarrassing. The ANP are Pashtun nationalists."

Ali has a different perspective than Ahmed on the matter. She spoke with several ANP members during her recent travels through Pakistan, and says, "They certainly were against the militants."

You can read the entire article here.

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