Almost a decade after launching a major military operation to defeat militants occupying parts of Malakand division in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the Pakistan Army on April 12 began gradually transferring powers to the civil administration.

A symbolic event was held at a fort in Timergara, headquarters of Lower Dir district, where the top army officer for Malakand, Major General Ali Amir Awan, handed over charge of security checkpoints manned until now by soldiers to senior civil and police officers serving in the region.

The process will take time as the changeover has taken place in only two of the seven districts in Malakand division. The remaining five districts are Swat, which was the most violent during the peak years of militancy from 2007 to 2010, and Buner, Shangla, Malakand and Chitral. No timeline has been given and the army will decide the timing of transferring authority to the civil administration in the remaining districts depending on the experience gained from the new system put in place in Lower and Upper Dir.

The transfer of powers to the civil administration is presently limited to the handing over of security checkpoints to the police. Now police instead of soldiers will be deployed at the roadside checkpoints. The army will provide back-up support to the police manning the security checkpoints, but its focus will shift to the restive Pakistan-Afghan border to prevent a repeat of cross-border attacks by Afghanistan-based Pakistani militants. The army’s deployment in Malakand division will continue in the foreseeable future. A new army cantonment is being established in Swat for permanently stationing troops in this scenic valley known for its tourist attractions.

The army had been considering plans to gradually transfer authority to the civil administration in Malakand as the security situation improved. It also wanted to limit its soldiers’ role in dealing with the public as it sometimes caused resentment. However, the decision was quickly finalized when people in Swat recently staged protests against the long delays and humiliation they faced at the roadside security checkpoints. The army authorities ensured that the police cases against the protesters were withdrawn, the security checkpoints in Swat were reduced in number and those passing through the check-posts were given relief.

The military doesn’t want to lose the goodwill and public support it won because of its action against the militants and sacrifices in Swat and elsewhere in Malakand division and FATA.

Rahimullah Yusufzai

Around the same time, a new organization, Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), highlighted this issue in its public rallies along with its demands for justice for the young tribesman, Naqeebullah Mehsud, who was killed in January on the orders of senior police officer, Rao Anwar Ahmad Khan, in a fake police encounter in Karachi. The PTM also demanded the recovery of scores of missing persons and removal of landmines that were taking a heavy toll of civilians’ lives in Waziristan.

The PTM is led by youth who take pride in their ethnic Pashtun identity and are critical of the military’s role in handling militancy and dealings with the people of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) who suffered years of displacement owing to militancy and military operations. The government took steps to accept PTM demands, but its leadership wanted quick action and annoyed the army by making allegations against it.

The transfer of authority from the military to the civil administration has started in districts that were relatively peaceful and stable. Lower Dir and Upper Dir were chosen because there had been no terrorist activity in these two districts for years. These districts never had a large number of militants and those who turned to militancy were killed, captured or had to escape to neighboring Afghanistan.

Implementing this decision will be far more challenging in Swat, the home district of Maulana Fazlullah, head of the outlawed militant group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The occasional targeted killing of pro-government notables in Swat has continued and there was even a major terrorist attack on Feb. 3 when a suicide bomber attacked soldiers playing volleyball in a sports area near their military base. This was the first such attack in more than three years; it killed 11 soldiers and injured 13 more. The TTP claimed responsibility for the bombing.

The military has been portraying Swat as a success story in its counterterrorism operations spread over the past 15 years as the militants were defeated in the action undertaken in May 2009 and the nearly 2.3 million people displaced at the time were repatriated and settled within a few months. The military doesn’t want to lose the goodwill and public support it won because of its action against the militants and sacrifices in Swat and elsewhere in Malakand division and FATA.

The move to gradually transfer authority to the civil administration is an effort not only to prove that Malakand is now peaceful and stable, but also to move its soldiers away from the public eye by withdrawing them from security checkpoints and letting the police do what should always have been their job.

— Rahimullah Yusufzai is senior political and security analyst of Pakistan.  He was the first to interview Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar and twice interviewed Osama Bin Laden in 1998. Twitter: @rahimyusufzai1