Worrying uncertainties Dawn Editorial Thursday, 16 Apr, 2009 | 08:48 AM PST |

Sharia for peace was the deal, so will the militants live up to their promise?— Reuters/File Photo
Now that the Nizam-i-Adl regulation has been approved by the president, the ball is in the court of the militants in Malakand Division. Sharia for peace was the deal, so will the militants live up to their promise? The jury is still very much out on that question. Sufi Mohammad struck a deal with the provincial government in the NWFP on the basis that he could convince Maulana Fazlullah and the TTP militants to lay down their arms and allow the state to resume its duties in Swat.

At the moment though no such thing is happening; the militants are still visible, they are still carrying out patrols and they are heavily armed. Even if it is accepted that it will take time for the militants to dismantle their terror infrastructure, the point is that they have yet to even begin such a process. Moreover, Sufi Mohammad has sent unsettling mixed signals. He must clarify if in fact he has called for immunity for the militants in Swat. If he has, then was this part of the deal struck with the NWFP government? Surely adding conditions as Sufi Mohammad sees fit cannot be the basis of a viable deal.

One of the basic problems with assessing what is going on in Swat is that many things have yet to be clarified. There are rightly reservations about the bona fides of the militants as potential peace partners in any case. But compounding that uncertainty is the murkiness surrounding what has been agreed to and what hasn’t. Consider the issue of the revamped judicial system that is to be introduced in Malakand Division.

Has the jurisdiction of the superior courts in Pakistan been ousted? Is it even constitutionally possible to remove the Peshawar High Court or the Supreme Court from the picture? There is no doubt that Sufi Mohammad has been pressing for a self-contained judicial system for Malakand, one in which it is locally decided what the Sharia says and how it is to be implemented. So if differences arise, as seems inevitable, on the interpretation of the deal and what the constitution permits, then by what process will Sufi Mohammad and the NWFP government resolve them?

The obvious worry is that if the militants remain armed to the teeth and roam freely in public, they will be able to browbeat the government into accepting their position in any dispute. The second problem is of time frames. When President Zardari dithered over enforcing the Nizam-i-Adl, the militants cried foul and demanded its immediate implementation. But no such immediacy seems to concern Sufi Mohammad when it comes to the militants holding up their end of the bargain. Without a definite timeline to leave the public arena, the fear is that it is the militants who will now be engaging in delaying tactics.