“In February 2009 the NWFP [Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province] provincial government and the [Pakistani] army signed a peace deal with the Taliban in Swat that allowed sharia courts to be set up in the province in return for the army’s withdrawing and the Taliban’s disarming–which they promptly refused to do. Despite complaints by Pakistan’s increasingly vocal civilians that the accord was a major capitulation to the militants and set a terrible precedent that contradicted the rule of law, President [Asif Ali] Zardawi and the national parliament signed the deal into law on 14 April [2009] without even a debate. Within days the Swati Taliban took control of the local administration, police and education in the Swat valley and began expanding into other districts with the clear intention of trying to overthrow the Islamabad government.”
– Ahmed Rashid, Taliban, Page 241