Thirty-five reasons not to negotiate with militants

In league with criminals, the government sets out to eliminate crime

The seventh All-Parties Conference (APC) held within a space of five years also delivered what the previous six had done: a surfeit of hyperbolic rhetoric oozing with grandiose concerns and proclamations, effectively signifying nothing. It resolved to carry forward the “give peace a chance” recipe and reiterated that “attaining peace through dialogue should be the first priority”. Understandably, as nothing else was stated in the APC resolution by way of explaining how the process would be conducted, this should also be construed as an invitation to the militants of all hues and colours to come to the negotiations table. Mention was also made of the “troubled situation in Balochistan” and the “continued threat to life, property and business in Karachi”.

There has been a flurry of comment on the APC resolution since it was unveiled and the parties that bore the brunt of the militants’ attacks in the last five to ten years have come out with strong reservations regarding initiation of talks with such outfits which do not agree to surrender arms and accept the writ of the state. These parties are also expressing the fear that the government would pick-and-choose from among the million-or-so militant groups for talks that are currently operative in the terror war against the state of Pakistan. That’s just the tip of the mammoth dilemma encompassing a host of issues. How many militant groups are there? Who do they represent? Who are their backers and financiers? Is there any prospect at all of evolving a commonality of paradigm with any of these groups? If agreement is, indeed, reached with one or some of them, how will the others respond? In the event these talks fail with some of them, which seems eminently obvious, how would the government already down on its knees would respond? Will it prostrate itself further before the venomous militants and beg for mercy for not having tried hard enough to agree with their demands to scrap the constitution, the democratic system and the rule of law? Will a formal pardon be sought from these marauding bands which have inflicted grievous harm to just about every national household? Will we seek intervention from another select coterie of obscurantist mullahs, the so-called interlocutors, who puke venom from the pulpit every living day of their life and who are responsible for most of the militancy and sectarianism rampant in the country? The gory enactment is endless. In the end, there is virtual oblivion, a feeling of not belonging anywhere in this vicious entanglement as most of us appear doomed to be fighting to preserve the last remnants of our dignity and self-respect.

That’s not all. There is more. Will we ask the people to forget the skulls of soldiers severed from their bodies and displayed for public viewing? Will we forget the innocent thousands who have been butchered or mortally maimed through ten years of ceaseless violence? Will we agree to bomb the schools out and banish the prospect of education? Will we agree to keep women hostage and children captive? Will we agree to the gory prospect of public executions, stoning to death of perceived criminals and the like? Will we agree to take the fateful step back a few centuries and commit to live by the writ of the militants?

For such is the scenario that the reported thirty-five demands of the militants, put across as preconditions to the initiation of a peace dialogue, enact for the state of Pakistan. Each one of these demands is my reason not to negotiate with the militants. But, even more gruesome is the manner in which the story was ‘killed’ in its infancy by the government – the usual crap saying that this was not ‘official’ yet, or that we should not become instruments in sabotaging the prospect of reconciliation with the militants. This is also reflective of the government’s desperation to conclude a peace treaty with the ramshackle group going around as the TTP and its multifarious criminal associates. The reported demands put across by the TTP as preconditions to the initiation of a dialogue include the freeing of thousands of its prisoners presently in the government’s custody, imposition of the Sharia in the country, handing over of Gen Musharraf to them, and a host of others.

For a moment, consider the fate of all the previous peace deals that the government signed with various militant groups over the last decade. What happened to the Shakai Peace Treaty signed with Nek Mohammad Wazir in South Waziristan in 2004, or the Srarogha Peace Agreement with Baitullah Mehsud signed in 2005, or the Swat Agreement signed with the Swat Taliban, a branch of TTP, in 2008? All these agreements and some more failed in bringing an end to violence in the country. Another strategic factor that has to be kept in mind while contemplating the prospect of negotiations with the militants is the linkage that the TTP has with the Afghan Taliban and other militant groups which extend support to one another whenever the need arises.

The federal government’s weakness primarily stems from the soft corner that the PML-N leadership has traditionally nurtured for the militants. Their government in Punjab, lasting a full five years, refused to move against the nurseries of militancy spread all over the Southern Punjab and the adjoining areas. But, it was strange that, during the APC, no political party stood up against the prospect of unconditional negotiations with the TTP and its associates and insisted that they first lay down their arms and accept the writ of the state, for whatever it is worth now. There has been much comment since the conclusion of the APC, but that becomes relatively meaningless because they all signed on the dotted line when the need was for political parties to take a principled stance and show their resolve in the face of violence and unremitting threats. So, an opportunity was lost and a message signifying humiliating weakness has been transmitted to the TTP and its associates who are now in the ascendant position of exploiting it as may suit their strategy. Such are the obvious results of pursuing policies that emanate from flawed perceptions and ill-advised prognosis.

The worsening situation in Karachi is another example of a similar myopic vision of the political leaderships. The concept of eliminating crime in league with associates who themselves command criminal gangs indulging in extortion, kidnapping and murder of rivals is seriously flawed. Additionally, the handing over of command of the entire operation to the leader of one such gang smacks of short-sightedness, possible complicity and a palpable lack of transparency. This is so on the basis of the SC judgement where it had accused parties including the PPP, the MQM, the ANP, the Sunni Tehreek and the Jamaat-e-Islami of having their own militant wings which needed to be disbanded.

A report by Declan Walsh published in the New York Times on September 12 titled “Pakistani’s iron grip, wielded in opulent exile, begins to slip”, cites from the transcript published by WikiLeaks on the “Gangs of Karachi” that the MQM has “an active militia of 10,000 gunmen with an additional 25,000 in reserve” which makes it a larger force than the city police. The report also quotes the police and diplomats who talk of the MQM as a party whose ‘mandate’ is “backed by armed gangs involved in racketeering, abduction and the targeted killings of ethnic and political rivals”.

A more scary part of the report deals with the international network that the party has built stretching to the US, Canada and South Africa “which has become an important financial hub and a haven for the group’s enforcers”. Police interrogation reports also speak of militants from the party having travelled to South Africa “in between carrying out political assassinations in Karachi”. Faced with legal threats in the UK linking the MQM chief with the murder of a former party stalwart Imran Farooq and huge sums of money having been recovered by the Metropolitan Police from his coffers, the report talks of a possible implosion within the party, post Altaf Hussain’s rule, that could “split it into hostile factions – a frightening prospect in a city where political violence already claims hundreds of lives every year”.

Isn’t the government aware of these facts and some more? Doesn’t it understand the mega folly of handing over the command of the clean-up operation to the chief minister of the province who is also the provincial head of his party? Does the government expect him to move against his own goons? Now that he has not done so, and there is protest regarding the operation having taken a political turn with the MQM being exclusively targeted, how can the government reset the course to bring in the required non-partisanship and transparency to give the operation a certain level of legitimacy?

The whole thinking was flawed. The policy was flawed. The prognosis was flawed. In league with criminals, the government had set out to eliminate crime. Such an initiative was taken because the government was never seriously interested in cleaning up the city of Karachi. It was a ploy to give an impression of doing something while, in actual effect, the move was a clever manoeuvre to further widen the divide among the leading political players active in the city, thus opening up prospects for it to reap political dividends. The whole strategy was not only flawed, it was downright dishonest – a trait that comes handy with the top leadership of the PML-N.

In Karachi and in the rest of the country, people are up against trained gangs of criminals, some have their fangs out while others have hidden them behind the shroud of politics. The best way out, if anyone is listening, is to call the MQM’s bluff and allow the army to do the rest – now and after the MQM implosion that may not be too far away.

The writer is a political analyst and Executive Director of the Regional Peace Institute. He can be reached at: [email protected]