CONFUSION once again reigns in Islamabad and, by extension, across the country. The federal government is unhappy about the drone strike that killed Hakeemullah Mehsud last week, this much the country has learned from the bombastic response of Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan. But unhappiness or even outrage is not policy. And it’s on the policy front that the government seems beset by confusion and uncertainty. The things that are known about the PML-N government’s app-roach are as follows: the government believes that there is a serious internal security threat; it first wants to try the dialogue route with the TTP; it wants to keep ties with the US relatively stable; and it wants unilateral drone strikes to end in Fata. But those objectives can and will clash, as they did last weekend when an American drone killed the TTP chief. Surely, the government ought to have been prepared for just such an eventuality. And even if it wasn’t — preparedness not being a part of the Pakistani condition generally and certainly not of the present government — the focus in the immediate aftermath should have been on presenting a sensible and coherent message.

Instead, the government’s response has fit a depressingly familiar pattern: angry rhetoric with little promise of substantive action, a combination that only ends up ceding further ground to Taliban-friendly elements in an already skewed public discourse. Now that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has finally weighed in with sensible words emphasising his government’s policy on talks without lashing out at external powers or eulogising Hakeemullah Mehsud, the question is whether the overheated remarks of some in his party were simply designed to publicly ingratiate the government with the TTP (or perhaps to avoid incurring the TTP’s wrath) while quietly sending more sensible signals to the US about pushing forward with the tense though necessary relationship.

If so, it would be a tragic repetition of a game that the country’s political leadership has played with the public for decades. What the country needs is an honest reckoning with the past and present. Mr Sharif has been sensible for the most part in his public comments, but he is guilty of being too timid and speaking out far too infrequently. In fact, too often it has seemed as if the running of the government has been wholly delegated by the prime minister to his cabinet. If not interested in the minutiae, the prime minister should at least give a firm and clear direction on major policy matters. The country deserves more from its prime minister.