Fazlullah: death of a mass murderer
Maulana Fazlullah, the emir of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, was killed by a drone strike on the evening of June 13, 2018, in Kunar province, Afghanistan, not far from the border with Pakistan. His death was confirmed by TTP, and the Pakistani military described it as a “positive development.”
Ordinarily, the death of one man, even if like Fazlullah he is the leader of a movement, does not mean much. In past years, TTP has shown a shocking ability to regenerate its leadership cadre, with the killing of one quickly leading to the installation of another. After the death of Baitullah Mehsud came Hakimullah Mehsud and then, by the luck of the draw, came Fazlullah himself. His fiery sermons were telecast to a terrified population, while his denunciations of music, women appearing in public, and just about everything else, were enacted in whatever territories the Taliban could claim.
In the case of Fazlullah, however, the death of one man does matter. This was the man who in 2012 ordered the shooting of Malala Yousafzai, then a young girl taking a bus home from school. This was the man who ordered the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar in December 2014. The gunmen there were ultimately responsible for the deaths of 139 teachers and children. If the bodies of all the children that Fazlullah ordered killed that day were laid out they would cover the entire schoolyard, a sea of tiny corpses — a testament to one man’s limitless cruelty.
These atrocities were not the only ways in which Fazlullah promoted the killing of children. He was opposed to polio vaccinations and ordered attacks on women health workers who go from door to door dispensing the polio drops that protect youngsters from a disease that can cripple them. Alleging that the drops were part of a conspiracy to sterilize children, TTP gunmen opened fire on unarmed and helpless health workers all over the country.
Ordering the shooting of Malala and the mass murder of schoolchildren were not the sum total of Fazlullah’s cruelties. In 2001, while leader of one of the offshoots of TTP, he announced that it was against tradition for women to vote and take part in politics. As a result, in elections during that period many seats reserved for women were left unfilled. Women were afraid to vote and afraid to stand for public office. Vigilantes associated with Fazlullah patrolled the streets to ensure his strictures were followed. The elimination of women from all of public life — from commerce, where they could shop at their local markets, to politics, where they could vote in their own interests — was part of a campaign of erasure. Women could exist only in the private sphere.
Behind all of this violence — which was indiscriminately inflicted on girls such as Malala and on hundreds, even thousands, of other people who were killed while praying in a mosque or shopping in a market, or who simply happened to be driving along a street in the wrong place at the wrong time — was the idea that anyone with whom Fazlullah disagreed could be killed. And so many of them were.
It is undoubtedly true that the grip of TTP has weakened in recent years. The improvement of the security situation is what permitted Malala Yousafzai to visit Pakistan this year, her first visit since the attempt on her life.
Rafia Zakaria
It is undoubtedly true that the grip of TTP has weakened in recent years. The improvement of the security situation is what permitted Malala to visit Pakistan this year, her first visit since the attempt on her life. In the tribal areas, where the group once held such sway, women are not only planning to vote in the next election but also running for office. The debilitating avalanche of bombings, shootings and kidnappings that were the work of the extremist group have all abated significantly.
The death of Fazlullah will not bring back all the children from the Army Public School that he ordered killed. It cannot resurrect the innocence of Malala prior to being shot in the head. And it cannot bring back the hundreds and thousands of people maimed and murdered at his behest.
At the same time, however, Fazlullah’s death can be considered the final salvo in a sordid and bloody chapter in Pakistan’s history. The elimination of a man who was so instrumental in pushing retrograde ideas and easy justifications for murder imposes a significant blow on the murderous ideas that he propagated, supported and used as justifications for mass killing. Coming as it does mere weeks before the general election, it can herald a new era in Pakistan, a moment of hope and healing.
Undoubtedly, Pakistan and Afghanistan still have a long way to go in eliminating Islamist extremism. The scars inflicted by the constant onslaught of political violence, and the trauma suffered by populations that have had to collect the bodies of small children, cannot be erased quickly. The insidious seepage of the murderous ideas of men such as Fazlullah is also not something that can be magically wished away.
Progress, however, should be lauded when it happens and the death of Fazlullah, the man who ordered the murder of Malala, is for Pakistan the beginning of a new chapter. The world in general, and Pakistan in particular, is better off without a crazed and bloodthirsty mass-murderer hiding inside. Fazlullah’s death is a victory for hope, for the now grown-up Malala, who continues to exude courage, and for all the Pakistanis who believe that a new beginning, free of terror, is possible and imminent.
• Rafia Zakaria is the author of The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan (Beacon 2015) and Veil (Bloomsbury 2017). She writes regularly for The Guardian, Boston Review, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, and many other publications. Twitter: @rafiazakaria
