REPORTS that the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan faction in the Bajaur Agency led by Faqir Muhammad is seeking a peace deal with the Pakistani state ought to be treated with some caution. While in principle peace deals should never be ruled out completely, the Pakistani experience thus far with peace deals has not been very promising. However, there are reasons to believe that this time things may, just may, be different. Since the death of Baitullah Mehsud, the TTP appears to have increasingly suffered from cracks and a lack of direction. In Bajaur, the state appears to have re-established its writ over most areas and only small pockets of resistance remain. Faqir Muhammad himself is believed to have reached a deal with local tribal elders in Bajaur in 2009 to stop his radio broadcasts and some other militant activities in the agency. While Faqir Muhammad remains at large (it isn't clear whether he is hiding in Nuristan or Kunar in Afghanistan or Bajaur) and cross-border raids into Pakistan have become a menace in recent months, overall there is a sense that the militancy threat has receded from the peaks it touched in 2008-09. So if peace deals are being contemplated and quietly worked at behind the scenes, they may be occurring in circumstances where the state is in the ascendant rather than on the defensive, as it was earlier. That would be good news.
Yet, it is important to keep in mind the failed experiment with peace deals in the past. Promises made by the militants, particularly to evict foreigners from areas in which the former exercised influence, were never really abided by. The time and space created were used to further entrench themselves, making it even more problematic for the state when eventually they had to be taken on militarily. Watchfulness, then, must be the byword in implementing any deal with the TTP.
There is also another element of concern when it comes to peace deals at this particular juncture: the state must take care to ensure the deals do not result in heightened cross-border activity into Afghanistan. The last thing Pakistan needs is to solve one problem only to exacerbate another. As the US contemplates winding down its combat mission in Afghanistan, fresh Pakistan-US tensions due to expediencies on the Pakistani side could prove dangerous.
