Moderate voices from a Pakistani city

In Kohat, near Pakistan's restive tribal areas, many say the remote border regions need more government engagement to curb rising extremism. Part 2 of three.

from the May 30, 2007 edition

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"There is lack of justice, lack of security," says Abdul Rauf, president of the Bar Association in Kohat, the district capital and home to some 40,000. "The lack of job opportunities is another thing. We don't have an industrial base here."

But because education and income rates are comparatively high for the district, residents are not only ignoring the Taliban's call but actively fighting back, Mr. Rauf and others say.

Mussarad Shaffi is proud proof. A local politician and lawyer, she runs a women's crisis center in the city that offers shelter and legal services for victims of domestic violence. Mrs. Shaffi believes in spreading a broader vision of religion and women's rights, even though it threatens her life.

"I'm doing my job at the crisis center, and for that I'm facing so many threats," says Shaffi. "Our men say women who go out of the house are bad women."

But Shaffi and others say that, even with the advantages their city has, there is only so much they can do.

Her concern helps illuminate a troubling observation made by many here and throughout Pakistan: The Army-led administration does not support the democratic institutions that can invigorate an anti-extremist movement. For President Musharraf to support Pakistan's liberal forces, his critics say, he would have to share power with political rivals – a compromise Musharraf is unwilling to make.

Ironically, the only power-sharing his secular, US-backed regime does accommodate is with the religious parties. Those groups, say observers, are the very same forces many blame for stoking extremism in the first place.

"There are two extremes in this country: the elite politicians and their liberal views, and the religious forces," says a police official in Kohat city, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Between the two extremes, there is the leaderless majority. Both sides of the extremes have guns – big guns. The public has no guns. How can you ask them to stand up? But they should. Their children's future depends on it."

As Musharraf suggested to military graduates in April, the Army continues to see itself, not people power, as the central barrier against militancy: "You as officers of the Pakistan Army have to guarantee security of the motherland. … Our arms are the guarantee of peace."

In contrast, Rauf and other observers throughout the province insist that if empowered, a civilian government backed by liberal political parties could contain and begin reversing extremism in a matter of months. Time, he fears, may be running out.

"Suppose the Taliban manage to get to this place with their rocket launchers – what do you expect the police to do?" says the police official. "If [the Taliban] sit on these mountains and fire rockets at us, we have no rockets to fire back."

• Second of three parts. Thursday: Girls' schools become targets.

Part 1: Pakistan losing territory to radicals

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