What do Taliban want?

What do the Taliban really want and why is it not easy for Pakistan to fight them? The Associated Press carried an article on December 17: “Peshawar terror attack: What does Pakistan Taliban want?” Answering the question, the report said: “The TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan) has vowed to overthrow the government and install a harsh form of Islamic law.” On CNN, Laura Smith-Spark and Tim Lister (“What do the Taliban want?”) reported: “When the siege finally ended, Pakistan was left reeling and the world wondering: Who would do such a thing? And what do they hope to achieve? The identity of the group behind the massacre at the Army-run school in Peshawar is no mystery. The Pakistan Taliban — who have long conducted an insurgency against the Pakistani government as they seek to overthrow the authorities and bring in Sharia law — were quick to claim the terror attack.”

James Rush wrote in the Independent (“Who are the Taliban and what do they want?”): “The Pakistani Taliban have been fighting to topple the government and set up a strict Islamic state. Following a major Army operation against insurgents in tribal areas, the group has vowed to step up its attacks.” This same question has long been asked in our region’s English press. Hamida Ghafour reporting for the National in 2010 (“What do the Taliban really want?”) wrote about the Afghan Taliban: “But who are the Taliban, and what do they want? Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for Mullah Omar, the one-eyed leader of the Taliban, said in an interview with CNN last year: ‘We ask from the beginning and we say once again: to enforce the Sharia law and Islamic government in Afghanistan, to remove foreign forces from our country.’”

Arthur Bright in the Christian Science Monitor in 2012 (“Who are the Taliban and what do they want?”) quoted an expert saying this of the Taliban’s funding: “A large majority... is thought to derive from wealthy individuals living in Arab Gulf states... Insurgents may also use the Haj — the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca — as a time to raise funds. These ties to Gulf-based militants may account for Al Qaeda’s influence over some groups.” Two things are obvious. First, what the Taliban really want is Sharia law, and two, that they are not a wild and isolated group but one with proper financing. The question is why they make that demand. The answer is in the law.

The Pakistani Constitution’s Article 227 (Islamic Provisions, Part IX) reads: “(1) All existing laws shall be brought in conformity with the Injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah, in this Part referred to as the Injunctions of Islam, and no law shall be enacted which is repugnant to such Injunctions.”
This commitment is clear and unambiguous. It comes from a promise made in 1949 by Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly under Muhammed Ali Jinnah’s successor, Liaquat Ali Khan. That text, the Objectives Resolution, reads: “Whereas sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to Almighty Allah alone, and the authority to be exercised by the people of Pakistan within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust;

And whereas it is the will of the people of Pakistan to establish an order:Wherein the state shall exercise its powers and authority through the chosen representatives of the people; Wherein the principles of democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice, as enunciated by Islam, shall be fully observed; Wherein the Muslims shall be enabled to order their lives in the individual and collective spheres in accordance with the teachings and requirements of Islam as set out in the Holy Quran and Sunnah.”

Despite this, Pakistan’s laws are mostly the same as secular India’s, which in turn are mostly the same as the colonial British under Macaulay had written them in the mid-19th century. In the 1980s, President Zia-ul-Haq introduced some Islamic laws. This included such things are lashing people caught with alcohol, and laws on rape and blood money. Many of these laws are on the book but not really put into practice because the Pakistani state is unwilling to turn the clock back.
Analyst, columnist Khaled Ahmed calls Pakistan an incompletely Islamised state. Meaning that the promise of full Sharia has been withheld, leading to a lack of clarity exploited by the Taliban.

To answer the question that analysts have been scratching their heads over: what the Taliban really want is implementation of Pakistan’s Constitution. That is why it is difficult to fight them — because they say they are right on the question of law. No fight against them will succeed, or can even be properly started, unless the confusion over the Constitution and its promise is resolved.

Aakar Patel is a writer
and columnist