An outright rejection of any negotiation that offers peace is as wrong as an unqualified endorsement of any negotiation as long as it offers peace. The key word here is not peace but a just peace. What Bajaur Agency TTP commander Maulvi Faqir Muhammad calls “a model for other areas” needs to be inspected. Both the federal and the KP governments have long since maintained a willingness to talk to the Taliban as long as they lay down arms. Has that condition been met? Are the militants ready to accept the positive framework of the Pakistani state? Does their interpretation of said framework include, say, letting girls’ schools function within the tribal areas? Would it include cooperation in matters like clamping down on illicit trade over the Durand line? Would the peace be only with the Pakistani state or would we go back to the square one of having the areas being used as a spring board for intrusion into other countries like Afghanistan and India?
Why would the Taliban be willing to give concessions at this point in time? The answer might lie in the fact that they have suffered huge losses of their own in the military’s operations in the tribal areas. Across the border in Afghanistan, that seems to be the American strategy as well: weaken up the enemy to incentivise a turn towards the negotiating table. Is the Pakistani situation as analogous to the Afghan one to justify a repetition? The ISAF forces in Afghanistan have reached a long drawn-out stalemate. Have we, here, done absolutely everything we could have by fighting the militants?
Responsible elements on both sides are denying the talks. Voices from either side are also celebrating it. The sheer opacity of the whole development is so overpowering that one yearns for the Swat peace deal. In that particular snafu, the political government played its cards right and the opposition in the civil society was a result of the fact that the mechanics of the understanding were clear for all to see. Here, both supporters and opposers are grappling in the air for lack of knowing any tangible facts. A lack of transparency is not becoming of a democratic government.
