The Situation in Swat: An Interview With Shahid R. Siddiqi | Jeremy R. Hammond
Shahid R. Siddiqi began his career in the Pakistan Air Force, and later joined the private sector where he was until recently in a senior management position. At the same time, he worked as a broadcaster with Radio Pakistan and was the Islamabad bureau chief of the English weekly magazine, “Pakistan & Gulf Economist“. In the U.S. in 1994, he co-founded the Asian American Republican Club in Maryland to encourage the participation of Asian Americans in the mainstream political process. He now writes columns, with articles appearing in the Pakistan daily Dawn and The Nation, among others. He is a contributing writer for Foreign Policy Journal.
In an interview with Foreign Policy Journal, Mr. Siddiqi explains Pakistan’s ongoing military offensive against militant groups in the Swat district and the context in which the government made the decision to launch it. He explains why the Pakistan Taliban had support in the Swat Valley, how a peace deal between the militants and the government came about, and why it collapsed.
The Western media reported at the time that the peace deal between the Pakistani government and militants linked to the Pakistan Taliban would allow Shariah, or Islamic Law, to be implemented in the Swat district. But in an interview President Asif Ali Zardari suggested that this wasn’t really an accurate characterization of the deal. What exactly was the truce agreement between the government and the militants?
The issue of the so-called Shariah law, which in fact was Nizam-e-Adal (meaning “The System of Justice’), was quiet simple but somehow got distorted due to involvement of the group of religious militants that espoused it, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, or “Pakistan Taliban”), who had now expanded their terrorist activities into the settled area of Swat moving in from the adjoining Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where they were operating under Baitullah Mehsud.
Until about a decade back this area was under a similar law until the government of Pakistan decided to change this situation and extend into it the same law that covered the rest of the country. The old law made life easy and simple for the local folks who understood it, and it enabled them to get quick justice at their doorstep. They were unhappy with the change because now the courts were distantly located, corrupt, and utterly inefficient. Clearly, the militants had the support of the local population in this demand. Read more…



