NWFP: CENTRAL SWAT KHANS HAVE LOST AUTHORITY, COMPLICATING

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 PESHAWAR 000161

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 8/4/2019
TAGS: PGOV PTER MOPS EAID PK
SUBJECT: NWFP: CENTRAL SWAT KHANS HAVE LOST AUTHORITY, COMPLICATING
POST-CONFLICT GOVERNANCE

REF: A) PESHAWAR 158 B) LAHORE 153

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

1. (C) Summary: Central Swat's prominent landowning "khan"
families, who have long formed the backbone of Swat's political
leadership, have seen their position seriously undermined by the
rise of militancy in Swat and their flight from the district.
Now, they are attempting to rebuild their positions in the
district and create an indigenous anti-militant counter-force,
against a backdrop of continuing violence and class resentment
in central Swat. Their own dearth of resources, lack of
government support for their plans, and internal rivalries will
make the accomplishment of this task close to impossible. While
the passing of the landlord class may be a positive development
for Swat in the long run, it will likely create difficulties for
Swat's government administration in the immediate wake of the
conflict there. End Summary.

The Departure of the Khans
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2. (C) Since before the time of the British, Swat's politics
have been dominated by the khans, prominent landowning families
from among the district's dominant Yusufzai Pashtuns who command
the allegiance of the people of their localities. Even now,
virtually all of Swat's National Assembly and Provincial
Assembly members and nazims (elected leaders at the district,
tehsil, and union council level) are members of these families.
Swat's urbanization, land reform, and other economic and social
changes have marginalized some of these families (the family of
the Wali, the former ruler of Swat, now has little land and
virtually no authority within the district),but in certain
parts of the district, khans were until recently able to resist
the tide and retain much of their power and influence. This was
particularly the case in central Swat - especially around Matta.
Khans in Matta wielded disproportionate influence in the
politics of Swat as a whole, dominating their own region and
leading the actions of allied families in other parts of Swat
and in neighboring districts.


3. (C) Over the past two years, this picture has changed
dramatically. Targeted by militants, the khan families of
central Swat largely abandoned their homes in two waves - one in
late 2007, as the militant pressure began to intensify and at
the beginning of the first Pakistani military campaign in Swat,
and one in mid-2008, as conditions worsened again in the wake of
that campaign. Many of them moved to nearby Abbottabad, or
further afield to Peshawar or Islamabad. In their absence,
militants destroyed their homes, orchards, processing plants,
and other symbols and elements of their economic power. Both by
their flight and by the destruction of their property, the khans
suffered considerable loss of face in Swat. The primary
exception was Afzal Khan Lala, the most prominent member of one
of the leading families of central Swat, whose refusal to leave
his home even during the period of militant dominance of Swat
and despite the deaths of many of his relatives have made him
something of a folk hero among Swat Pashtuns.

Insecurity and Conditions for Militancy Still In Central Swat
-------------- --------------


4. (C) With the conclusion of the government's military
campaign in Swat, the khans have begun to make plans to return.
Those who have spoken to us are deterred, however, by the
continuing insecurity in their home areas. Throughout central
Swat, and especially in Matta and Kabal, continued militant
activity and ongoing military operations have restricted access
to the area for intending returnees (Ref A). While members of
prominent families in Lower Swat and the Mingora area have been
returning, Consulate contacts say that those of central Swat
have generally made exploratory visits but then returned to
their cities of exile.


5. (C) The returnees complain that while the army remains in
place in central Swat, it lacks ties to Swat's people and
therefore information; as a result, militants are able to move
about unmolested and intimidate the population. (Note:
Pakistani press on July 29 quoted an anonymous source within the

PESHAWAR 00000161 002 OF 003


NWFP police as admitting that the government now had virtually
no informants left in the Swat population.) Several Consulate
contacts found hope of an anti-militant trend in Swat from the
series of revenge killings of suspected Swat militants over the
past two weeks (at least ten have been reported). They have
variously attributed these killings to the military and to the
families of the militants themselves. Almost all of these
killings, however, have taken place in the Mingora area and
Lower Swat. In central Swat, the khans allege that militants
are still the force that most intimidates the population.


6. (C) While the khans who have spoken to post claim to have
the support of their traditional dependents in their home areas,
they are likely aware that the grievances that originally drove
militancy are still present. From the beginning of militancy in
Swat, the Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) in the district took advantage
of the class struggle between khans and poor Swatis to fill its
ranks with those who had felt oppressed by the khans. The TTP's
excesses have diminished its attractiveness, but the arrival of
thousands of impoverished farmers to devastated lands will
recreate the discontented population that originally fed the
militancy. Among certain populations, history is already being
revised. As recently as July 30, Shahzad Gujar, a tribal elder
and head of the "Gujar Qaumi Movement" (which purports to
represent the Gujar tribesmen who make up much of the population
of landless, non-Pashtun peasants living in central Swat but who
joined the militants in disproportionately low numbers) told a
panel of prominent Malakand politicians and tribal leaders and
Pakistani academics that the taliban in Swat had been a positive
force - militants' excesses late in their period of dominance,
he said, had actually been brought on by criminals calling
themselves taliban.

No Government Support for Khans
--------------

7. (C) This underlying resentment against the khans among
central Swatis and the loss of face that the khans have suffered
help to explain the intensity with which the major landowning
families in central Swat have pursued the government assistance
in regaining their original positions in Swati society. This
drive has included khans' requests for reimbursement of
destroyed property and for public government recognition of
their stance against the militants (neither of which has met a
positive government response). The principal goal of the khans'
lobbying, however, has been the acquiring of government sanction
and assistance in setting up private armies. Already as the
military operation in Swat was in late May (and before any
returns were possible),Afzal Khan Lala in nationally televised
interviews began calling on the government to arm the people of
Swat against the militants. According to several Consulate
contacts involved in the Swat Qaumi Jirga (a pressure
group/quasi-government-in-exile formed of prominent Swatis),the
Jirga was involved in equally intense backroom lobbying to the
same end at both the provincial and federal levels.


8. (C) At first, the NWFP government appeared to buckle to
the pressure, unofficially floating a plan to provide surplus
police arms to local "village defense committees" in mid-June.
By early July, however, criticism of the scheme by various
stakeholders (including the Embassy) caused the NWFP government
to publicly withdraw the offer of arms to such groups. The
government instead proposed that they be given to a special
supplemental police force for Swat, which would be more
accountable to the provincial government and police (though it
is unclear to the Embassy how exactly the special police would
interact with other police in the district). The landowners
complain that such forces, lacking the stiffening provided by
accountability to local leadership (i.e., to the khans),will
melt away if faced by renewed insurgency. They continue to
lobby the government to either reverse this decision or to
provide them with funds to help equip their own forces, but at
present they do not have the means to present the kind of
counterforce against the militants which several have told post
is the sole prerequisite for their return.

Divisions Among the Khans

PESHAWAR 00000161 003 OF 003


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9. (C) Longstanding divisions between the major landed
families also continue to play a role in preventing Swat's
political leadership from presenting a unified front against the
militants. The major families of Yusufzai khans in Swat (as
well as neighboring Buner and Shangla, and to a lesser extent
Dir) have for centuries been divided between two rival groups,
called "dallas." Prior to Swat's absorption into Pakistan, one
group was aligned with and the other generally opposed to the
Wali. After absorption, most members of the pro-Wali group
aligned with the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) and most members
of the opposition aligned with the Awami National Party (ANP).
The two groups have been and continue to follow the leads of the
two principal families of the Matta tehsil of Central Swat, who
are represented most prominently by Jamal Nasir (the nazim of
Swat district) and Afzal Khan Lala respectively. On occasion,
as in the 1970s when faced by the socialist Mazdoor Kissan
movement, the two dallas have united to face a common threat.
As militancy began to rise over the past few years, however, the
two groups pursued different strategies.


10. (C) By mid-2007, when militants began to target Swat's
political leaders, the Musharraf-aligned PML-Q (Pakistan Muslim
League-Quaid - primarily composed of the dalla led by Jamal
Nasir's family) held most locally-elected offices in Swat not
held by MMA (Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal - the religious party
alliance which at that time governed the NWFP). The ANP (and
therefore Afzal Khan Lala's dalla) held virtually no offices and
therefore was not initially targeted. Under pressure and losing
relatives to assassinations and kidnappings, Jamal Nasir's
family went to Afzal Khan Lala in September 2007 and asked him
to join them in forming a lashkar and repressing the militants;
Afzal Khan consulted with his family and declined to do so.
Members of both dallas point to this moment as the key missed
opportunity in dealing with the militants; by the time the
militants began in earnest to target the ANP-linked families in
mid-2008, the landowners as a class were no longer in a position
to mount any resistance.


11. (C) Ironically, Afzal Khan Lala has become the most
respected leader in Swat primarily because of the period of
militant dominance that his initial reluctance to fight helped
to create. The militants drove virtually all other major
landlords and secular politicians out of Swat, while Afzal Khan
courageously refused to leave his home. Among Jamal Nasir's
dalla, this fact has engendered a mixture of envy and
resentment. In Afzal Khan Lala's dalla, there is ambivalence
about allowing old rivals to take advantage of Afzal Khan Lala's
prominence to regain the status they had lost. Discussions
among the landowners of both dallas continue, but there are few
indications of concrete progress in forming a united front
capable of presenting an alternative to the militants.

Comment: Khans' Influence Wanes, But Who Will Replace Them?
-------------- --------------


12. (C) In the wake of their flight from Swat and their
impoverishment by militant actions, the once-powerful khans of
central Swat have been reduced to government supplicants, unable
to recreate the system they once dominated. To the government,
they are expendable - particularly now that the local offices of
nazim, which the khans dominated, will be stripped of power by
the repeal of the local government ordinance (Ref B). The khans
were in many ways as important in fueling militancy as they
could have been in crushing it, and the Embassy assesses that
government equipping of unaccountable private armies would have
created greater problems than it would have solved. In the long
run, the diminution of their power should diminish the class
struggle that has fed the militancy in Swat. However, the
khans' argument that they are the natural anti-militant leaders
appears to be true in the absence of any evidence of more
grassroots anti-militant activity. Their absence will strip
Swat of needed intermediaries for the non-Swati bureaucrats who
are now setting up to rebuild the district and bring it firmly
under the government writ.
TRACY