What next for Taliban leaders?

Now that the government has had some success in capturing alive some senior leaders of the Taliban resistance in Swat, the question is, what will the government do with them? Are they going to be put on trial? If yes, how accessible will the proceedings be to the public? There is no denying that bringing these elements to court is the most acceptable way to proceed. A trial, rather than a militarily imposed solution, is integral to the working of any civilised society; not only because it protects the right of every individual against being unjustly persecuted, it is also important in retaining the moral legitimacy of the state. If the prominent leaders of the current Taliban resistance are trailed and convicted on strong evidence of violation of the constitution the government stands a much better chance of establishing the legitimacy and moral authority of its actions than does a military operation that results in mass graves of alleged Taliban.

The reason that the capture of members of the Taliban leadership in Swat as opposed to simply eliminating them is more significant is that it builds some confidence in the government’s intention to deal with the issue seriously. When people are simply killed in a military operation, there is no chance left to hear their side of the story. This creates not just a moral dilemma, but more importantly it removes all possibilities of actually finding the real facts about the phenomenon. Important questions such as who are actually the forces behind the current Taliban groups in Pakistan are best avoided rather than addressed when the members of these groups are killed in military operations. However, when they are brought to trial and the cases made by both sides are required to be based on evidence many real facts about the sources of support for these groups come forward.

It is precisely these details that need to be secured from the members of senior leadership of Taliban being captured from Swat. The fact remains that these Taliban, whoever they are, could not have reached the scale they did in Swat without some systematic support from influential actors within or outside the country. It is logically very difficult to see how people who have very rudimentary levels of education, have very limited exposure to modern technologies, and belong to the economically less privileged groups can arm and organise themselves to a level where they could virtually take over the entire administration of Swat, eliminate the writ of the state, and at one point were also projected to have become so strong so as to threaten the capture of Islamabad itself. Clearly, either those threats were exaggerated deliberately by the state or there were forces behind these groups, which were making members of a very deprived and marginalised section of the Pakistani population, such a major threat for the Pakistani state.

It is therefore very important that the members of these groups being captured are brought to trail. But what is equally important is that the trials be transparent and are conducted not under special courts. It is important that the members of these groups are tied in conditions where the public has the confidence that these people have been given a fair chance to present their case and have not simply been beaten into accepting one or the other explanation for their action. Such fairness is not only a demand of justice but it is also important in investigating why these groups do what they do and who supports them to carry on with actions which actually become a source of Pakistan’s destabilisation.

In this context it is very important that the media and the civil society organisations engage actively in following up on what happens with the prominent figures being captured from the Taliban resistance. It is also important that they are provided access to trial proceedings, whenever they are carried out. It is a very positive development if the Pakistani state is to try to deal with the members of these groups through courts of justice rather than through use of arms. However, to gain full benefits of such a shift, it is critical that the trails are fair and people are not beaten into admitting stories.