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SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
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Pakistan’s slide towards state failure accelerated dramatically in year 2007, and the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on December 27 was a sharp reminder that the country’s progressive collapse was much more rapid and irretrievable than most had envisaged. In more ways than one, 2007 was a cumulative reflection on all of President Pervez Musharraf’s errors of omission and commission since he took power in the coup of October 1999.
A simple truth in vast regions of Pakistan today is that the state has withered away. A wide array of anti-state actors is currently engaged in varying degrees of violence and subversion in an extended swathe of territory. A cursory look at the map indicates that the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and Balochistan are witnessing large-scale violence and insurrection. Violence in parts of the Sindh, Punjab and Gilgit-Baltistan has also brought these areas under the security scanner. Islamabad’s writ is being challenged vigorously – violently or otherwise – in wide geographical areas, and on a multiplicity of issues. Well over half of the territory presently under Pakistan’s control, including Gilgit-Baltistan and ‘Azad Jammu & Kashmir’, has passed outside the realm of civil governance and is currently dominated essentially through military force. Terrorism-related Fatalities in Pakistan, 2007
Source:
Institute
for
Conflict
Management
Database
Year 2007 unambiguously demonstrated that the flag of extremist Islam continues to flail vigorously and violently across Pakistan, even as state agencies appear less in control, and more vulnerable. In a welter of violence, at least 3,599 persons, including 1,523 civilians, 597 security force (SF) personnel and 1,479 militants, were killed in 2007. While militant and terrorist violence has been reported from all the provinces, the worst affected were FATA followed by the NWFP. Fatalities in 2007, at 3599, were substantially more than double the fatalities in the preceding year (1471). The number of civilians killed remained marginally higher than the number of militants and terrorists killed – a continuing trend since 2003. A sharp increase in terrorist violence was recorded after the Army’s assault on the Lal Masjid in Islamabad on July 11, 2007. Indeed, the first half of 2007 (January-June) was marginally less violent than the same period in 2006 – with 869 fatalities in 2007 as against 984 in 2006. [It is necessary to note that, given Islamabad's understated accounts, the suppression of the Press and erratic reportage from all the conflict zones, the actual numbers of fatalities could be considerably higher than those indicated above]. FATA There are more than 100,000 soldiers deployed in FATA to confront the Taliban, al Qaeda and other militant groups who have created safe havens there. Five years after military operations were launched against the Taliban–al Qaeda combine in FATA, the radical alliance is the chief proponent and vehicle of a violent jihad that has achieved major strategic successes and significant victories. 1,681 persons, including 1,014 militants, 424 civilians and 243 SF personnel, were killed in the region in 2007. Next to the Northern Province in Sri Lanka, FATA is now the second most violent sub-national geographical unit in South Asia. The writ of the state has always been fragile in Waziristan, but levels of violence have been continuously augmenting. Throughout 2005, 285 people, including 92 civilians and 158 terrorists, were killed in Waziristan in 165 incidents. In 2006, the death toll was 590, including 109 civilians, 144 soldiers and 337 terrorists, in 248 incidents. Within FATA, terrorist violence and subversion affects all of the seven Agencies |
