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THE gruesome mass execution of the Frontier Corps soldiers that followed the killing of police commandos in Karachi by the Pakistani Taliban should have brought an end to the charade of peace talks. But even this latest bloodbath does not seem to have shaken our national leadership out of its delusion about mass murderers turning to civility.
Hardly a single day has passed without a terrorist attack causing more deaths and destruction since the start of the so-called peace talks. While the TTP owned most of these attacks, it has cleverly maintained a policy of plausible deniability on some others carried out by its affiliated groups. For example, the Mohmand TTP claimed to have massacred the FC soldiers; the responsibility of the attack on a Peshawar hotel killing several Shias earlier was accepted by the city chapter of the outfit.
What is most ironical, however, is that the government and its negotiating team deliberately bought into this ploy and have continued to play apologist for the militants’ actions. If those militant factions and various TTP branches are so autonomous then who’s the government talking to and to what end?
While seemingly engaging in talks, the TTP is also using violence to keep up the pressure on the government. This strategy seems to be working well for the militants; after each attack the government appears even more conciliatory. The talks are heading in the right direction and a breakthrough is expected soon, is the response of the government’s negotiating team after each attack. There may have been a bit of toughness in the government’s tenor after the barbaric killing of the soldiers, but there’s no loss of optimism about the outcome of the talks.
Ironically, the two terrorist incidents occurred after the much-hyped visit of Taliban representatives to North Waziristan for consultation with top militant commanders. The meeting was said to have yielded some positive response from the TTP leadership, but subsequent terrorist attacks negate such claims. In any event it seems to have little impact on an administration caught up in self-deception.
It has been a flawed negotiation process from the outset. While the TTP appears to have a clear strategy, the government went into the talks without any plan of its own. Consequently, the entire dialogue process was virtually handed over to the religious political parties and to hardline clerics with close ties to the militant groups. They tried to change the narrative from terrorism to the irrelevant issue of enforcement of Sharia in Pakistan.
In the midst of the process Maulana Abdul Aziz, the rabble-rouser head cleric of Lal Masjid, flaunted the threat of 500 female suicide bombers if the Taliban’s demands were not accepted. After lying low over the past several years since he was caught by security forces trying to slip through the military cordon during the 2007 siege of the mosque in a burqa, the maulana’s back in the limelight holding the TTP standard.
His ultra-extremist views startle even the most conservative clerics. Rejecting democracy as un-Islamic he seeks the enforcement of his version of a rigid Sharia system and justifies the Taliban’s use of violence to achieve the “sacred” objective.
In any civilised country, a preacher of violence would have faced legal action, but surely not in this ‘Islamic republic’, where mass murder is legitimised by the state. Instead, the white-bearded zealot stars in almost every television talk show spewing utter nonsense. All this is symptomatic of a state too weak and ineffective to enforce the rule of law.
Nothing could be more pleasing for the militants than the fact that both major political forces in Punjab and KP are playing on the Taliban’s turf. Not only the federal government, but also its main opposition group led by Imran Khan seems to be reading from the same TTP book.
It is appalling the way the PTI chief appeared to twist a confidential briefing by former army chief Gen Kayani to justify his party’s policy of appeasement. Apparently, there was no ambiguity whatsoever in the assessment that the elimination of militant sanctuaries in North Waziristan may result in a 40pc reduction in terrorist activities in the country.
But to contain militancy in the rest of the country the government needs to develop a comprehensive anti-terrorism strategy. This is the missing link that has to be filled in order to fight this existentialist threat to the nation effectively.
By dragging on the charade of the dialogue, the government may lose the window available to the security forces to successfully launch the operation to destroy the terrorist bastion in North Waziristan. According to security officials, matters may get much tougher if the decision is not taken within a couple of weeks, before the advent of summer. The consequence of indecision could be extremely costly.
Further delay in the operation would not only allow the militants to regroup, but also increase frustration in the military that has lost so many soldiers fighting the insurgents. The military leadership is certainly not very happy with the way the talks are being conducted with those challenging the state.
The reported demand by the TTP for the withdrawal of forces from a part of South Waziristan, as a confidence-building measure, is surely not acceptable to the military. This widening gap between the civil and military leadership does not bode well for the nation’s battle against terrorism.
The writer is an author and journalist.
Twitter: @hidhussain
