IF ‘give peace a chance’ is what they — the country’s political leadership — want to do, then perhaps they should be given the chance to prove they know what they are doing. There is though an enormous weight of history on their shoulders. ‘Give peace a chance’ may be an anti-war anthem of the 1970s in America, but it also, unhappily, echoes an even earlier time: “Peace for our time,” British prime minister Neville Chamberlain infamously declared in 1938 after signing the Munich Agreement with Hitler. The problem with Monday’s resolution of the all-parties’ conference in Islamabad is twofold: one, it fudges the issue of the threat the Taliban pose to Pakistan and two, it does nothing to clarify the means by which peace will be sought nor does it set out on what terms peace will be achieved.

On the issue of threat, the resolution is depressingly silent. In fact, the Taliban don’t even get a direct mention, just “our own people in the tribal areas”. To begin with, that appears to confine the militancy and terrorism problem to a particular geographic corner of the country, whereas that is not even remotely true. Second, the explanation for the security threat the country faces has been couched in terms of drone strikes and the situation in Afghanistan — with nary a mention of the TTP’s overt political and religious goals. Third, there is no mention of the growing sectarian threat militancy has branched into — a particularly problematic lapse given the overlap between Al Qaeda, the Punjabi Taliban and the TTP on this front. Fourth, the massive damage and loss of life inflicted by the TTP has earned no reference at all — a particularly egregious omission for an APC resolution that has dabbled in talk of morality when condemning drone strikes. Seeking to give peace a chance without being able to name the enemy or identify what it has done — there is little that is inspirational or even acceptable in any of that.

More problematically, the APC has left the country no wiser about who will be talked to, who will play the role of intermediary and, most importantly, what, if any, red lines there will be for a negotiated settlement. The silence on these matters can be interpreted two ways. The APC participants would suggest it is a way of keeping as many doors to as many groups as possible open for as long as possible. The other, less charitable explanation is that the political leadership is pusillanimous and weak. Let’s see what the weeks ahead bring.