Pakistan quietly abandons efforts for fatwa against Afghan Taliban
▶ Fear of a backlash and loss of influence with the Taliban causes Pakistan to pull back from agreed plan
Pakistan has stopped attempts to obtain a fatwa against suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism in neighbouring Afghanistan, fearing a backlash from the Taliban.
Since being removed from power by US-led forces in 2001, the Taliban have waged an armed insurgency against Kabul and international troops, one underpinned by a hardline ideology.
The teachings of the religious duty to carry out a violent struggle against an occupying force have motivated many to take up arms.
Almost 17 years after the invasion, as the US wants to negotiate a long-term settlement with its stubborn opponent, many looking to degrade the Taliban consider a religious decree from prominent Pakistani religious figures to be necessary for talks to be successful.
Last January, religious clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwa condemning terrorism in the country as un-Islamic.
The decree was endorsed by more than 1,800 religious scholars from different schools of Islamic jurisprudence and was praised as an important step towards curbing extremism and terrorism.
The fatwa was notable for the number of clerics who signed it who were previously considered to be supportive of the Afghan Taliban and were otherwise outspoken critics of liberalism and the West.
Among them was Hamid-ulHaq, the son of a cleric widely regarded as the father of the Afghan Taliban because of the number of high-profile militants, including Taliban founder Mullah Mohammed Omar, who graduated from his seminary in Pakistan’s Peshawar.
Hoping to discredit the Taliban, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani criticised the ruling and said it should not have been limited to Pakistan.
Mr Ghani said that if Islamic principles extended to all Muslim countries, the Pakistani fatwa should be implemented for Afghanistan.
The Taliban held power in the country from 1996 to 2001 and enforced their strict interpretation of Islamic law.
The group has long had roots that stretch to Pakistan, with many Taliban leaders graduating from religious schools in Pakistan during their rise fighting the Soviet invasion between 1979 and 1989.
Pakistan, among the first countries to recognise Taliban rule in 1996, has strong military links through its Inter-Services Intelligence.
In December, Pakistan used its influence to pave the way for the first direct talks between the US and the Taliban in Abu Dhabi since 2001.
During a visit to Kabul in October 2017, as the details of the fatwa were being agreed to months before it was issued, Pakistan’s army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa promised the Afghan government he would try to have Afghanistan included.
“Kabul believes the Taliban would lose significant influence if Pakistani scholars issued a decree against their armed resistance,” said Mohammad Amir Rana, the director of Islamabad think tank Pak Institute for Peace Studies.
But after discussions at a meeting in Karachi a month after Gen Bajwa’s visit to Kabul, Pakistan’s religious clerics baulked at the proposal. “They unanimously decided not to intervene in internal affairs of Afghanistan,” said Mufti Muhammad Naeem, chancellor of Jamia Binoria International, a Deobandi seminary in Karachi.
Mr Naeem said he was initially in favour of the decree but later changed his mind, fearing it could turn the Taliban against Pakistan.
“We did it for our country but we can’t do it for Afghanistan,” he said of the first decree approved in January last year.
A group of Afghan religious scholars visited Pakistan in October last year to convince the clerics of a need to outlaw Pakistanis travelling to Afghanistan for militancy but it proved futile.
“Afghan scholars briefed us about their constitution, which they claimed is Islamic in nature, and sought our support to issue a decree,” said Tahir Ashrafi, president of the All Pakistan Ulema Council.
In the past, many of them had issued fatwas in favour of the Afghan Taliban and their struggle against Nato forces.
“It was now difficult for them to recede from their positions,” Mr Ashrafi said.
The Taliban bases its claims to legitimacy on a religiously justified struggle against foreign occupation and would resist an attempt by Pakistan to issue a fatwa against it, Mr Rana said.
Fearing a loss of influence over the Taliban, by late last year the Pakistani authorities had quietly dropped the issue.