Pakistan's Taliban - It's the economy, stupid

The picture of Pakistan's "Taliban" that is most often seen in the West is of a strictly religious movement that seeks to impose an "Islamic" government on Pakistan, with the mandate of such government being primarily focussed on the oppression of women, the perpetration of public brutality, and the general banning of fun.

Without a doubt, there is certainly an element of such sentiment amongst those South Asian Muslims (and perhaps even Muslims generally) who are sympathetic to the militants' worldview.

The aspect of the movement that is rarely discussed, however, is how and why it has been able to command such popular support in areas such as Swat, where the Pakistani government has recently launched a fresh military offensive, following the breakdown of the peace accord it signed just months ago with the rebels.

As this article from Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah explains, the key to the Taliban's success has little to do with restricting education or burning down cinemas, but with the total failure of Pakistan's landowners to institute meaningful land reform that would benefit the country's peasants.

Sunni militancy is taking advantage of deep class divisions that have long festered in Pakistan, he said. “The militants, for their part, are promising more than just proscriptions on music and schooling,” he said. “They are also promising Islamic justice, effective government and economic redistribution.”

. . .

After Shujaat Ali Khan, a senior politician in the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, narrowly missed being killed by a roadside bomb, he fled to London. A brother, Fateh Ali Mohammed, a former senator, left, too, and now lives in Islamabad. Mr. Nasir also fled.

Later, the Taliban published a “most wanted” list of 43 prominent names, said Muhammad Sher Khan, a landlord who is a politician with the Pakistan Peoples Party, and whose name was on the list. All those named were ordered to present themselves to the Taliban courts or risk being killed, he said. “When you know that they will hang and kill you, how will you dare go back there?” Mr. Khan, hiding in Punjab, said in a telephone interview. “Being on the list meant ‘Don’t come back to Swat.’ ”

One of the main enforcers of the new order was Ibn-e-Amin, a Taliban commander from the same area as the landowners, called Matta. The fact that Mr. Amin came from Matta, and knew who was who there, put even more pressure on the landowners, Mr. Hussain said.

The insurgency that Zardari and Gilani are now trying to rally the army to fight in Swat is, with a sort of predictable irony, a product of the failure of landowners, like Zardari, to institute meaningful land reform that might have created less favourable conditions for the Taliban.