ARRESTS, DEATHS OF TNSM LEADERS UNDERLINE GROUP'S

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 PESHAWAR 000128

NOFORN
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 6/12/2019
TAGS: PGOV PTER MOPS PK
SUBJECT: ARRESTS, DEATHS OF TNSM LEADERS UNDERLINE GROUP'S
IRRELEVANCE

REF: PESHAWAR 34

CLASSIFIED BY: Lynne Tracy, Principal Officer, U.S. Consulate
Peshawar, U.S. Department of State.
REASON: 1.4 (b),(d)

1. (C) Summary: The arrests of several key members of the
Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammedi (TNSM) and subsequent
deaths of two of the arrested members has brought TNSM briefly
back into the spotlight, but in a very different role than it
played earlier this year. The way TNSM handled the denouement
and subsequent collapse of the Swat peace deal it had brokered
has left the group devoid of support from the Pakistani
government, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Swat, and the
religious parties in the NWFP. TNSM leader Sufi Mohammad is in
poor health, his traditional base of support in Lower Dir has
been under government attack, and his lieutenants have for the
most part gone to ground. The government roundup of the TNSM
leadership appears aimed at tying up loose ends; the lack of
party or popular reaction to the roundup points out the group's
current irrelevance. End summary.



Arrests and Deaths Provoke Comment but Not Reaction

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2. (C) On June 4, the government of the Northwest Frontier
Province (NWFP) government announced that TNSM deputy chief
Maulana Alam, spokesman Amir Izzat, and local leader Maulana
Wahab had been arrested in a military sweep in Amandara,in
Malakand district. The announcement, initially denied by the
Pakistani military, was definitively confirmed on June 6, when a
Pakistani army convoy carrying the captured TNSM leaders toward
Peshawar was attacked by an IED and small-arms fire and Alam and
Izzat were killed along with a Pakistani soldier. The Pakistani
armed forces' spokesman Major General Athar Abbas confirmed the
deaths and admitted that Wahab was also in military custody; he
denied a TNSM statement that TNSM leader Sufi Mohammad was also
in Pakistani military custody. Consulate contacts, however,
tell us that Sufi Mohammad has been in the custody of the
Pakistani government for most of the past two weeks. On June 9,
the Pakistani government arrested Swat TNSM chief Iqbal Khan.




3. (SBU) The Pakistani press carried considerable speculation as
to the identities and intentions of the June 6 attackers. NWFP
Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain blamed the TTP for
the attack; TTP spokesman Muslim Khan blamed the government. A
third theory, advocated by some Consulate contacts, was that the
attack was a rescue attempt by TNSM members that had
inadvertently led to the deaths of the leaders whose rescue was
being attempted. Press reported that around a thousand people
attended the funeral for the two men, despite the short notice
and the curfew.



Coinciding Interests No Longer

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4. (S/NF) The government's claim that the TNSM leaders had been
killed by TTP personnel was leant credibility by persistent
reports since the February peace deal that TNSM leadership felt
under threat from the TTP. At a local level, leaders of
militias loosely affiliated with the TNSM have clashed with
militias affiliated with the TTP. In the Mahmoond area of
Bajaur on June 7, for instance, a TNSM-affiliated militia led by
Salar Masood clashed with Faqir Mohammad's TTP-affiliated
militia, reportedly a turf battle over the revenues from
extortion; four militants were reported killed. (Note: Faqir
Mohammad has had a long affiliation with TNSM in Bajaur, but

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over the past year and a half has increasingly identified
himself with Tehrik-i-Taliban aims and goals. There have been
hints off and on of a power struggle within TNSM/Bajaur which
may be intensifying with Sufi Mohammad in custody again.) Sufi
Mohammad, reportedly in poor health, has been incommunicado even
to his deputies for stretches of several days at a time; his
principal lieutenants have also largely gone to ground, leaving
local leaders to make their own decisions.




5. (C) With the collapse of the Swat peace deal at the beginning
of May (if not before),the Pakistani government appears to have
written off Sufi Mohammad's TNSM as a political force to be
feared or manipulated. NWFP officials had told Consulate that
they were engaging Sufi Mohammad and the TNSM because of their
perceived potential effectiveness in restraining the activities
of the TTP in Swat (reftel). The behavior of TTP militants in
Swat after the peace deal was signed in February, combined with
Sufi Mohammad's unwillingness even to condemn militant
violations of the accord, showed this perception to be in error.
Sufi Mohammad's attempt to dictate the terms of implementation
of the Nizam-i-Adl regulation demonstrated that he would not be
helpful to the government even in this respect. As the peace
agreement broke down in early May, Sufi Mohammad went into
hiding; government forces subsequently showed little restraint
in targeting the area of Maidan in Lower Dir, where Sufi
Mohammed had based himself and his family. When a Pakistani
military bombardment in early May destroyed Sufi Mohammad's
house and killed his oldest son, there was no significant
response from the TNSM or the community.




6. (C) As the Swat peace accord was announced in February,
religious parties such as Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) and Jamiat
Ulema-i-Islam - Fazlur Rehman (JUI-F) rallied around the TNSM
and its role in forming the Nizam-i-Adl (shari'a) regulation,
which they praised as a good model for implementation of shari'a
nationwide. JI and the Deobandi-based JUI-F, traditionally
strong in the Malakand division, had significant ties with the
TNSM leadership - many of whom, like Sufi Mohammad, were
Deobandis and former JI members. The NWFP government,
recognizing this, relied heavily on government officials with
ties to the religious parties in their negotiations.




7. (C) Sufi Mohammad, however, agreed to a version of
Nizam-i-Adl that eliminated a source of religious party
patronage (septel). He then chose the moment of his greatest
triumph - the signing and passage of the Nizam-i-Adl regulation
- to embarrass the religious parties in widely-viewed interviews
on two of Pakistan's private TV channels in early May. In these
interviews, Sufi Mohammad declared that democracy was "kufr"
(infidelity) and denounced JI's Qazi Hussain Ahmad and JUI-F's
Maulana Fazlur Rehman for their support of the democratic
process, saying he did not "even offer prayers with
pro-democracy people." Former NWFP Health Minister and JI
member Inayatullah Khan and other Consulate contacts in
religious parties generally reacted wearily to news of the June
6 deaths of TNSM leaders, expressing their regret but adding
that the killings were not particularly significant.



Comment

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8. (C) Aside from speculation as to the identity and motives of
the June 6 attackers, the reaction in NWFP to the effective

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decapitation of the TNSM has been a collective yawn and a few
crocodile tears from the religious parties. While the
organization still seems to have some drawing power in certain
localities of Lower Dir and Malakand districts, it has clearly
outlived its utility (for the moment at least) to the
government, TTP, and Islamic parties - entities whose competing
and coinciding interests had elevated the group to the position
of prominence it held earlier this year. For the near- to
medium-term, the Pakistani press's use of the adjective
"defunct" to describe the organization seems to be apt. End
comment.
TRACY