Pakistan police detain pro-Taliban cleric Mohammad | World | Reuters
Pakistani police have detained pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Mohammad, accusing him of helping militants in the country’s northwest and sabotaging the government’s fight against them, an official said on Sunday.
Mohammad helped broker a deal between the government and the Taliban in February to end violence in the northwest Swat valley, but the pact collapsed after militants refused to lay down arms and began expanding their influence in nearby districts.
Security forces subsequently launched an offensive against the militants in Swat and nearby districts nearly three months ago.
And the reason for his detention is: Pakistan arrests pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Muhammad who brokered Swat peace deal that fell apart
Muhammad, father-in-law of Swat Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah, negotiated a truce with the government in February that imposed Shariah, or Islamic, law in the valley in exchange for an end to two years of fighting. But it was widely seen as an acquiescence to Taliban control of the area.
The deal collapsed in April when the Taliban advanced into neighboring districts, triggering a military offensive that prompted a spree of retaliatory attacks by militants in the northwest and beyond.
Mian Iftikhar, information minister for the North West Frontier Province, said Muhammad was arrested for encouraging violence and terrorism.
“Instead of keeping his promises by taking steps for the sake of peace, and speaking out against terrorism, he did not utter a single word against terrorists,” Iftikhar said in a news conference in Peshawar, adding that the cleric’s stance “encouraged terrorism. It encouraged violence.”
More here.The militants who were battling the Army (led by Sufi Muhammed’s son-in-law) have had to go along with the deal. The Pakistani government is hoping that this agreement will isolate the jihadists and win the public back to its side. This may not work, but at least it represents an effort to divide the camps of the Islamists between those who are violent and those who are merely extreme.
Over the past eight years such distinctions have been regarded as naive. In the Bush administration’s original view, all Islamist groups were one and the same; any distinctions or nuances were regarded as a form of appeasement. If they weren’t terrorists themselves, they were probably harboring terrorists. But how to understand Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the countries “harbor” terrorists but are not themselves terrorist states?
Tags Technorati: Sufi Mohammad, Pakistan, Taliban, Mian Iftikhar, Maulana Fazullah, Swat Valley
