AT PENPOINT
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa seems to be getting into the news for all the wrong reasons. Not only was the Chief Minister restoring electricity at a federal installation by throwing his (considerable) weight around, he was also threatening to write to the IMF that the federal government was not settling his province’s dues. Then there was the Midyan incident, where a tourist was lynched by an angry mob for descrating the Holy Quran, after the local police station was burned down along with a police mobile. This followed after the attack on Chinese engineers working on the Dasu hydropower project, in which five Chinese nationals were killed in March. As if to top it all, the PTI rejected the National Action Plan Apex Committee’s decision to launch a new operation against terrorism, prompting Defence Minister Kh Asif to ask the PTI supported the terrorists.
The PTI probably does not support the terrorists, though it was in office in KP in July 2021 when nine Chinese nationals were among 14 killed in an attack. However, it would not like too close a look at the governance of KP, which has been under PTI rule since 2013. The links between the PTI and the Taliban have been alleged, but there has been no arrest at which evidence must be provided to a magistrate, let alone a trial before a judge, at which such allegations have been tested. However, the attack on the Chinese was supposed to have been commited by the Baloch Liberation Army. While the TTP and the BLA have been linked before, there has been no allegation of links between the PTI and the NLA, or any Baloch nationalist group for that matter.
The Prime Minister and Defence Minister have both dialled back on the Azm-i-Istehkam operation, saying that it is not to be a full-scale operation like previous ones, but a continuation of the operations that are being already carried out. It was pointed out that the previous operations have not succeeded in eliminating terrorism. It may be argued that terrorism was at least being contained, and had not replaced the foothold it had lost, the control of the South Waziristan Agency. The importance of the Tribal Areas, of which the Waziristans are a part, can be gauged from the fact that they were first made part of the settled area of KP, and then the TTP demanded that they be reverted.
The KP government has to explain why it allowed the penetration of BLA activists into the province. It has also been pointed out that the PTI’s CM made no objection to the operation at the APEX Committee meeting, even though he was in attendance. The PTI’s record in KP is longer than his, for he previously not even been a member of its Assembly. Though this is the PTI’s third consecutive term, he is also the third CM provided by the party. The previous two deserted the party in the run-up to the February elections, when they had formed a separate party, the PTI Parliamentarians, which bombed badly, failing to win any seats in any Assembly.
KP’s loyalty to the PTI is thus not based on the grip of some local strongman, but on loyalty to a single personality, Imran Khan. Though some of the sheen of the PTI wore off in the 2021-22 local body polls, when the JUI(F) succeeded in winning 35 Tehsil chairmanships while the PTI won 45, PTI-backed candidates won 91 of 115 seats in the Provincial Assembly and 25 of 43 seats in the National Assembly, which was its best result in four outings.
One of the problems with any operation against terrorism is that it needs a police force. The KP police has been under a great deal of pressure from terrorism, but the Madyan attack provides a new challenge. The disconnect between the federal and provincial governments is on a number of levels.Â
KP, and previously the NWFP, had alternated between right and left in elections prior to 2013, when the PTI first won. However, it now seems that it had found a party of both the left and the right in the PTI. However, the effect of the Afghan jihad, the rule of the Taliban, the US occupation of Afghanistan, and now again Taliban rule, on KP, should not be ignored.
It should also be noted that the CM personally minds his constituency. His recent storming of an electricity feeder in Dera Ismail Khan showed that. He had restored electricity that had been cut off under the revenue-based loadshedding plan, whereby feeders with high nonpayment ratios experience more loadshedding than areas where consumers pay their bills. That kind of high-handedness is risky, because the grid station was under the federal government, and even a provincial CM should be careful when his party is not in office at the centre. However, he did have the assurance that no action would be taken against him, because even federal organisations only exercise force through provincial police forces, and it would be a daring policeman indeed who would take any action against a CM even if he was stabbing someone to death in broad daylight. Ali Amin Gandapur would know that he could order the arrest of the grid station in-charge, even if the arrested official later got off.
His action encouraged others. PTI MNA Zubair Khan Wazir not only took over Jandola grid station, but issued it a loadshedding schedule, to be operated under the supervision of the men he stationed there. Now Jandola falls within the new South Waziristan district, but is still part of the Tribal Areas Electricity Supply Corporation, TESCO, which is separate from the Peshawar Electricity Supply Corporation, and which is a high defaulter, because the very idea of paying power bills has not entered anyone’s mind.
A masty clash could occur anywhere within the former tribal districts, both because of these large arrears, and the armed truculence of the consumers. Indeed, it was because of that armed truculence that TESCO allowed the running up of arrears, because when its staff, with police backing, tried to cut meters, they were not allowed to. The CM has issued police orders not to register any cases against MNAs or MPAs who do anything at a grid station. He has therefore condoned in advance violations of the law.
That the law needs changing is another debate. Until the competent authority amends it, it should hold the field, and the CM’s order itself seems illegal. Some police officials may disobey, be punished and go to court against that punishment, where the CM’s order will be tested, but that will not happen. It is easy for an SHO not to register an FIR. It would require the order of a competent court to oblige him to do so.
The CM is still pressing the federal government, threatening to write to the IMF unless the federal government pays KP its dues. That is purely blackmail, but it has turned federal attention away from the challenge to its writ posed by ending loadshedding.
One of the problems with any operation against terrorism is that it needs a police force. The KP police has been under a great deal of pressure from terrorism, but the Madyan attack provides a new challenge. The disconnect between the federal and provincial governments is on a number of levels. The control of the government is being shrugged, but no one has any idea of who or what is replacing it.
