Pakistan valley offers glimpse of Islamic law

MINGORA, Pakistan – A hundred miles northwest of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, the Swat valley offers a chilling vision of what much of the country could become.

Where tourists once frolicked, extremists are laying the groundwork for religious courts to dispense brutal punishments under their harsh interpretation of Islamic law.

The leader of the group, Sufi Mohammad, said penalties including flogging, chopping off hands and stoning to death must be available to Swat’s Islamic courts.

Floggings are the proper punishment for sexual intercourse between unmarried people, drinking alcohol and slander, Mohammad said. Thieves should have their hands chopped off, except for poor people who steal to feed themselves. The punishment for adultery is death by stoning.

“These punishments are prescribed in Islam. No one can stop that. It is God’s law,” said Mohammad, sitting on the floor in his makeshift headquarters in Mingora, the regional capital. Mohammad, the head of the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariaht-e-Mohammadi, or Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law, spoke in a rare interview with McClatchy Newspapers.

Concerns about the implementation of Islamic law in Swat grew on Friday when a video showing the public flogging of a screaming woman was broadcast widely on Pakistani TV stations.

Though it was unclear when and where the video was shot, it was believed to have been taken with a mobile phone in the Swat valley.

Pakistani authorities ordered inquiries into the video.

Swat, once known for its orchards and mountain streams, is the first region in mainstream Pakistan to be taken over by extremists. A leader of the Swat Taliban told McClatchy that Swat is a test case and the Taliban want Islamic law, or Shariah, introduced throughout the country.

Mohammad, who speaks softly and looks deceptively like a genial old uncle, with a flowing white beard and thick spectacles, reached his position when the Pakistani army capitulated in February after a two-year military assault on the former tourist destination by extremist Taliban.

In exchange for peace, the government agreed in talks with Mohammad to institute Shariah.

All that it takes to introduce the new system is for Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to sign off on it. Zardari has hesitated, however, possibly under pressure from Western countries, which have been highly critical of the deal.

Mohammad said time was running out for Pakistan to implement the deal. He warned that if the promised new courts aren’t fully operational soon, he’ll abandon Swat. That would leave the area once more to the marauding Taliban, who announced a cease-fire in response to Mohammad’s deal with the authorities.

“Our responsibility is to maintain the peace. When the demand (for Shariah) is met, the Taliban will put down their weapons. We will see to that. But if the government doesn’t agree to implement the deal, we will just go,” said Mohammad, speaking in Pashto, the regional language. “Then I don’t know what will happen.”

Mohammad has renounced violence and appears to have influence over the Swat chapter of the Taliban, which his son-in-law, Mullah Fazlullah, heads.

Despite the “peace deal,” the Taliban are far from quiet. Last week in Swat, they forcibly occupied the house of a member of parliament and overran an emerald mine. If Mohammad left, however, the Taliban almost certainly would start full-scale fighting again.

The government is gambling that Shariah will split the Islamists, bringing the “reconcilable” Taliban on board while isolating the hard-core. However, Mohammad is a former jihadist who led thousands of young Pakistani men into battle against the invading U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001, and his loyalties are unclear.

“I would not say we’re heading for normality, but this is the first peace we’ve had here for two years,” said Khushhal Khan, a senior administration official in Mingora. “This place was a war zone.”

The Taliban had banned girls’ education in Swat and prohibited women from shopping. Since the peace deal, those schools are open again and shops have taken down signs that barred women, but residents have few illusions about who’s won.

“Ninety percent of the people of Swat wanted the militants to be defeated by the Pakistan forces, just eliminated. But that was wishful thinking,” said Zia-ud-Din Yusufzai, the headmaster of a private school in Mingora, who thinks, as many Swatis do, that the Pakistani army was unwilling to fight the Taliban.

“For us, a doubtful peace is far better than a doubtful war, where the parties were not known, their aims were not known,” he said. “Swat has been assigned to the militants.”