AS the country’s right goes further down the path of a dialogue or appeasement with the terrorist Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), no player is looking pretty. Well, almost no player.

In taking a ‘we are subservient to the elected government’ line, the creator-backer of the religious militancy monster is starting to look like the only entity which seems to have a principled position, one closest to the view of the loved ones of the 60,000 casualties (dead and injured) of the TTP’s repeated murderous attacks.

The army may have lost several thousand of its own men, including a large number of junior officers, on the battlefield fighting the TTP, but its hand still seems stayed by its apparent commitment to groups of Afghan Taliban (and their terrorist allies belonging to a number of nationalities). Yet it comes in for no criticism.

Despite its reluctance to act against the TTP in any coherent, meaningful manner till the US ‘drawdown’ or exit from Afghanistan when the likes of the Haqqani Network and other fighters loyal to Mullah Omar possibly relocate there, its spin doctors have very successfully painted an image of a force eager to crush the TTP which is being held back by the Sharif-Khan axis.

Nobody is prepared to ask today where this subservience to the civilian elected government was when the PPP-led coalition wanted it to act against the militants in North Waziristan even if all the government desired, if its detractors are to be believed, was to please the US.

The bogus consensus mantra first emerged in Gen Ashfaq Kayani’s double-tenure: this despite the success of the Swat and South Waziristan operations, and several successful (but less publicised) ones in other agencies across Fata, where Afghan assets were not intermingled with the TTP’s.

It is equally true that having served a full tenure as head of the ISI Gen Kayani may also have had a more realistic assessment, an insider’s view of the might of the monster the military created as a foreign policy tool-turned domestic nemesis. Perhaps, it made him wary of a decisive battle which any assault on the last remaining bastion of the TTP would have amounted to.

It is said Gen Kayani and his (then) ISI chief Lt-Gen Shuja Pasha used to spend Friday afternoons together as they pored over intelligence reports of what was said at various prayer congregations across the country and the mood at these. He was equally worried about how deeply the toxic ideology had penetrated his institution too.

This wasn’t all. Because the brass wasn’t prepared to be open with and explain in unambiguous terms the concept of good and bad Taliban, obfuscation and confusion became the order of the day and took root. This allowed so many unfounded theories to gain traction.

Al-Qaeda-inspired toxic ideology, the desire to have their brand of Sharia enforced as per the directives of Ayman al-Zawahiri as far and wide as possible, received little attention, while the ‘valiant Pakhtun tribal victims of US drones rising up in rebellion to exact retribution’ gained considerable currency. Soon, the political parties which pushed this line out of fear or ideological affinity will rue the day they started to do so.

Nobody asked why the wrath of the anti-US jihadis was not aimed at the foreign occupiers of our Western neighbour and almost always at not just the armed forces of Pakistan but a large number of civilians. And if you happened to be a member of a smaller Muslim sect or the minority community your predicament was yours alone.

Drone attacks on our soil by a foreign power always need to be opposed on a point of principle. But one wonders if the huge number of Pakhtuns who died at the hands of the TTP terrorists didn’t belong to families and a tribal culture where their relatives would have sought retribution as well.

Despite many analysts expressing grave concern at what negotiations with the TTP could mean for the country and society, I, for one, am sure these talks can at best be likened to marking time. No significant concessions will be made to the terrorists apart from cash transfers to keep the PML-N citadel safe for now.

But it’ll be embarrassing for politicians committed to the ‘talks’ to suddenly change their tune when the military decides it can act against the murderers of many thousands of its soldiers without locking horns with the GHQ’s allies, the Afghan Taliban.

And change their tune they will because being ‘nationalists and patriots’ they wouldn’t publicly disagree with the defenders of our territory and ideology.

One hopes the military’s calculation regarding the goals of the Afghan Taliban is correct. Otherwise the ultimate nightmare scenario will unfold once the US leaves Afghanistan or at least dramatically reduces the footprint of its military presence there and the TTP has more ‘friendly’ space to operate from.

And one also hopes other manifestations of this dialogue with, or appeasement policy towards, religious extremists such as enhanced misogyny will also recede over time.

This week has seen shocking examples in not just the pronouncements of the Council of Islamic Ideology but also in the statement of a national icon, the cricketing hero Shahid Afridi.

Even if this last wish isn’t granted, no big deal for we are only talking of the rights of just half our population, aren’t we? n

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

abbas.nasir@hotmail.com