Global IssuesAFPAK: People Turning Against Taliban
The Taliban once regarded as true jihadists here are rapidly losing popularity in response to their ongoing targeting of mosques, schools and innocent people.
'It is not surprising that the Taliban’s popularity graph is dwindling. They no longer enjoy the quantum of public support they had at the time of the attack on Afghanistan by U.S.-led forces,' said Jamilur Rehman, a resident of South Waziristan and a student at the University of Peshawar.
Rehman hopes that the Taliban will soon vanish because they are rapidly losing local support. Quite apart from the horror of the atrocities themselves, killing women and children has also weakened the Taliban, he says.
Led by religious sentiments, thousands of people donated generously - and thousands of youths from Pakistan travelled to Afghanistan - to fight alongside the Taliban against U.S. forces in Sep. 2001. Millions of rupees were collected by religious parties in the name of supporting the Taliban.
Thousands of the youths still languish in Afghan jails, while hundreds have gone missing.
The word ‘taliban’ literally means ‘student of religious school’ but the now the word is synonymous with militancy, violence and terrorism.
The Taliban came to the forefront in 1994, and within a couple of years they took control of 95 percent of Afghanistan. They ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
Most of the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) population of 5 million in Pakistan welcomed the Taliban and provided them sanctuaries from where they later launched attacks against the Pakistan army.
They enjoyed unprecedented support which became evident when the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) - an alliance of pro-Taliban religious political parties - swept the election in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal religious alliance won an absolute majority in the Oct. 2001 regional elections, after which it ruled the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces for five years.
The MMA leaders were staunchly opposed to the U.S.-led anti-terrorism campaign in neighbouring Afghanistan that had ousted the Taliban from power. The group believed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had become a tool of U.S. foreign policy and campaigned on promises to enforce Islamic law and for a withdrawal of U.S. forces based in Pakistan.
At that time the people were also on the side of the Taliban, and the MMA received 11 per cent of the total vote in 2002 - with 3,349,436 ballots cast in favour. In contrast, during the election in 2008 the religious parties alliance won only six seats in the National Assembly with a total of 772,798 votes.
'Killing of respected religious scholars such as Dr. Muhammad Farooq Khan, Maulana Hasan Jan and Mufti Farooq Naeemi further eroded the Taliban’s public outlook,' Majeed Shah, a teacher in the political science department of the Gomal University Dera Ismail Khan told IPS. 'The people who held them in high esteem are now cursing them because of their follies.'
Dera Ismail Khan, one of the 24 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, is home to about 80,000 persons displaced from adjacent South Waziristan and North Waziristan Agency where the Taliban have brought residents’ lives to a standstill.
'Our children cannot go out of our homes due to curfew and the continuous battles. Taliban don’t allow children to play and go to schools. How can we support them,' said Jamal Akbar, once a strong supporter of the Taliban. Akbar, a shopkeeper in South Waziristan, said people were becoming poorer due to the Taliban’s activities.
'Attacking mosques and schools has deeply hurt the people’s sentiments and the Taliban are attacking both,' said Wajid Ali, 25, a teacher at a religious school in Khyber Agency - one of the seven tribal agencies in FATA.
The Taliban have so far executed 54 persons who were convicted by Islamic courts, he said. Even women were not spared - the body of a female dancer was recently hanged from an electricity pole after she was slaughtered.
'On Monday last week, the hands of an innocent person who had a family spat with a Taliban commander were chopped off in Orakzai Agency in FATA,' Wajid Ali said.
Before 2004, there used to be protest demonstrations whenever the U.S., NATO and Pakistan army killed a Taliban fighter, but after 2005 there is are no protests despite the fact that every week the U.S. unmanned drones kill about 50 militants.
'Militants have been burning mosques and holy books in the attacks,' said Juma Gul, a former Afghan intelligence officer. On Nov. 19, al-Qaeda-linked militants burned a mosque in the Gerai area of the Gizab District of Afghanistan, where dozens of holy books caught fire.
'Last year 1,224 innocent people died and 2,100 were injured in 52 suicide attacks carried out by Taliban militants. This is enough to create an element of disdain in people’s mind against Taliban,' said Sajjad Shah, a police officer in Dera Ismail Khan.
Islamic law doesn’t allow anyone to kill, injure or amputate the limbs of anyone without fair trial.
© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service