Islamabad, May 5 (Inditop) The Pakistani government had “shot itself in the foot” with the controversial Swat deal, an editorial in a leading English daily said Tuesday, while another said the pact was “never likely to make it past infancy”.
Having “capitulated” on the Nizam-i-Adl regulation on imposing Sharia laws in seven districts of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) “and indeed in attempting a peace deal through the suspect offices of a controversial religious leader, the government may have shot itself in the foot,” Dawn maintained.
According to The News, with details of the deal never being made public, “we do not know what the small-print may have been, but the bullet-points were enough to tell anybody with an ounce of analytic ability that this was a deal never likely to make it past infancy”.
Dawn also noted that “great havoc” had been wrought by the “weak-kneed approach” of the government and the security apparatus.
Thus, “further dilly-dallying on the militants’ challenge to state authority and not pursuing an effective military and civilian strategy to rein in the extremists will worsen matters.
“The time in which the tide can be turned back is fast running out,” the editorial contended.
It also noted that the “gauntlet” the Taliban had thrown down “is a bid to replace the country’s codes of judicial, governmental and administrative conduct with their own perverted ?system’.
“This observation is substantiated by (radical cleric) Sufi Mohammad’s recent comments on the treatment of women. Let alone their right to lead their own lives, the Sharia system he envisages is one where women will not even have access to basic medical care: he frowns upon the idea that male medics would treat them, and indicated that no woman would be allowed the education that may help her tend to her sisters.
“Effectively, this would allow Sufi Mohammad’s ideologues to have total control over half the country’s population whose status would thus be reduced to that of chattel,” the editorial pointed out.
Sufi Mohammad had brokered the contentious Feb 16 peace deal with the NWFP government under which Sharia laws would be imposed in Swat and six other districts of the province’s Malakand division in return for the Taliban laying down their arms.
The Taliban, however, reneged on the pact and moved south from Swat to occupy the Buner district that is just 100 km from Islamabad. The Pakistani military went into action against the Taliban April 26, prompting Sufi Mohammad’s spokesman to declare Sunday that the Swat peace deal “stands practically dissolved”.
Also on Sunday, Sufi Mohammad rejected the NWFP government’s decision to appoint a Darul Qaza or an Islamic appellate court to hear challenges to the orders of the Qazi courts being set up under the Sharia system.
Terming the decision as “unilateral”, he said he was not consulted and that he alone was competent to appoint the Darul Qaza.
According to The News, the Swat deal “thus joins a long line of deals done with extremists stretching back into the Raj that have failed.
“Its death will continue to be denied by federal and provincial governments even as its coffin is lowered into the ground. Once again the government have their back to the wall and the Taliban operate from a position of strength.
“Buner may have ‘almost’ been returned to government control; but Swat remains extra-territorial, a landlocked carrier task force from which deadly threat radiates daily,” The News said .
In this context, it noted that Sufi Mohammad, with “his customary sting in the tail” had said Sunday that Sharia and democracy are totally different systems and utterly incompatible.
“Pakistan, in his opinion, was founded as an Islamic state but Islam was not being practically implemented across the land,” it said.
