Peshawar, Swat

Pawns in a fatal game
Pakistan’s people are trapped between their own leaders and radicals in a bloody civil war
By Adnan R. Khan - Macleans

The eerie silence along the narrow laneway of Karim Pura Bazaar, in Peshawar’s old city, is deafening. Something is missing, and the absence weighs on the few shopkeepers brave enough to open for business. On any other Friday, after the obligatory afternoon prayers, the rows of tailor shops here would be doing a brisk business. But not today. A few laneways over, in Kabari Bazaar, one of dozens of electronics districts in the capital of Pakistan’s restive North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), the charred and mangled remains of shops offer a glimpse into what has happened: a day earlier, two bombs hidden in motorcycles exploded there, killing five and injuring dozens more. In the aftermath, much of the old city’s famous bazaar district has remained closed.

On the front line in Pakistan
Foreign correspondent Adnan Khan on stability in Pakistan, Western misconceptions, and the challenges of covering a civil war
By Philippe Gohier - Macleans

.... Peshawar has been my regular home base. Most of my local contacts live here. But also for some of the intangibles like cultural understanding. What a lot of people in the West don’t fully understand is the strong ethnic component of the war in Pakistan and, by corollary, the war in Afghanistan. These are wars pitting Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Pashtuns against, well, just about everyone else. The Taliban’s religious beliefs are a mixture of Islam and Pashtun tribal customs. So being in Peshawar puts me in Pakistan’s Pashtun heartland, close to the people I’m covering.

.... Geographically, Swat is quite literally separated from the rest of Pakistan by mountain ranges. Historically, it’s been a princely state, with the geography providing a natural border. In fact, Swat didn’t officially join Pakistan until 1969, 22 years after Pakistan was created. Politically, Swat has never completely accepted the legal and constitutional norms that took effect after 1969. That has been one of the prime motivators of the Sharia movement in the region. The legal system, particularly, was never embraced by the people in Swat.

.... The main valley in Swat, the one that runs through Mingora, up through Madyan and Bahrain and on to the picturesque Kalam, is what is being referred to when people talk about Swat in its touristic guise. But that is not all of Swat, and certainly not all of the Malakand Division which the Taliban took over. There are hundreds of towns and villages in this region, many of them in what’s known as the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA). These areas are very similar to their federal versions in that they are largely self-governed and extremely under-developed. The Swat Taliban come from these areas and this is also where their support base is.