The government seems to be clueless in dealing with the Taliban
The government seems to be scrambling every bit of efforts it can to make its peace overtures result in something real and concrete. While the merits of the initiative can be debated, it is apparent that the Taliban have no intention of settling it down with the government. In fact, they have issued statements to the contrary recently, going as far as daring the government to launch an operation in the tribal areas. How serious the government has taken their threatening stance can be seen in the fact that it convened a second meeting if the CCNS within a matter of three days, this time with a focus on implementing the decisions made in the first meeting.
The TTP rubbished the government’s suggestion for peace talks after the first CCNS meeting, and announced that it won’t change its ways and keep on carrying out terror activities. In fact, it did carry out an attack in North Waziristan. The government meanwhile seems to have been handed down its proverbial behind as it has shown weakness and unwillingness to take the terrorists head on. Instead of launching a military operation against them at once, it has already squandered precious time, a six month period on that, without making any actual progress. But the latest twist might force the government to rethink and revise its strategy. Indeed the second meeting of the CCNS, within two days of the first one seems to point towards this change of heart. If the government has indeed realised that talks might be a useless waste of time, it should indeed devise another strategy to tackle the issue of terrorism in a proper manner.
Along with a solution for the menace of terrorism, Pakistan also needs peaceful relations with its neighbours. This is a topic that has been ignored for far too long, and even when it was being given any importance the progress was hindered on one pretext or the other. But we can’t do that any longer. Only a stable country can have peaceful relations with its neighbours, and Pakistan has a long way to go in this direction. It only makes sense that it starts the journey sooner rather than later.