Delaying the inevitable

And it’s not going to work

After a lapse of more than half a year, the prime minister gracing the parliament with his presence makes front-page news. Indeed, a sad commentary on the state of our parliamentary democracy.

Even sadder, Nawaz Sharif came to the National Assembly to brief the parliamentarians on how to deal with the existential terrorist threat. After a majority of the PML-N parliamentary party members supporting military action against the Taliban only a few days back, it was widely expected that the prime minister will flesh out details of the expected operation.

The rump of his address to the parliamentarians was devoted to doing some tough talking. However, in the end he pulled a rabbit out of his hat by announcing a four-member committee to negotiate with the TTP.

Unsurprisingly the delegation largely composed of close confidants and Taliban sympathizers has been fully empowered by the prime minister. For the time being at least appeasers in the Sharif camp have won the day.

Even Imran Khan and Maulana Fazlur Rehman – otherwise each other’s nemesis – have endorsed the move. Nonetheless a lot of questions have been left unanswered.

No one knows the terms of reference of the four-member delegation. Its ostensible agenda is to talk peace with the Taliban and for starters purportedly secure a ceasefire for start of serious negotiations.

However, the objectives and the road map for achieving them have not been clearly spelt out. On the other hand, the TTP is focused on what it wants the most – enforcement of sharia in Pakistan.

Lest there be any confusion in anyone’s mind, the Taliban spokesman Shahidullah Shahid has again been very lucid about the TTP wanting sharia. While welcoming the formation of the four-member negotiation committee, no assurance on behalf of the Taliban about cessation of terrorist attacks is forthcoming before its shura meets.

Even if such an assurance is given at some stage, how can it be enforced? The TTP can simply get away by saying that it is adhering to the ceasefire agreement and that they cannot be held responsible for acts perpetrated by those groups who are not in favour of negotiations.

It has been reiterated that the government cannot go beyond the ambit of the constitution while negotiating with the Taliban. Obviously doing so will be a shameful retreat and virtual demise of the Pakistani state as a federal parliamentary democratic entity.

There is many a closet Taliban amongst the commentariat who have no qualms in obfuscating Jinnah’s speech to the constituent assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947 clearly spelling out the pluralistic democracy he envisaged for Pakistan. Unfortunately some of the members of the dialogue committee belong to the same ilk.

One member, a retired ISI major is a protégé of the controversial Gen (Retd) Hameed Gul. The former head of the ISI is the moving spirit behind the ultra right wing pro-Taliban the (so-called) Difaa e Pakistan Council.

Incidentally the retired major was court-martialed for dabbling into politics. It is claimed that his father was the mentor of the present TTP amir, Mulla Fazlullah. Is this a good enough reason to nominate him to negotiate on behalf of the Pakistani nation?

While the interior minister Ch Nisar Ali Khan is the minder of the negotiating committee, perhaps deliberately no politician has been included in the team. Nisar poses himself as a peacenik so far as the Taliban is concerned, to the extent that only a few months back he termed the felling of the TTP chief Hakimullah Mashud by a US drone attack as an attack on ‘the nascent peace process’.

While the interior minister never misses an opportunity to malign the US for its policies in the region, the advisor on foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz has just concluded a successful round of strategic dialogue in Washington, which has been held after a lapse of three years. This certainly sends mixed signals about the intentions of the government.

Without being clear about the objectives of peace negotiations with the TTP, these are not going to be easy. Rhetoric and bravado aside, are we actually ready to sever our ties with the US and rest of the civilized world?

Another important question that begs an answer: are we willing to give Ayatollah style veto power to a cleric or a bunch of clerics over what constitutes as an Islamic or an un-Islamic state? The founding fathers that never envisaged Pakistan as a theocratic state long ago had settled this conundrum.

It is axiomatic that those tasked to negotiate on behalf of the Pakistani nation not only should be of the same mettle, caliber and integrity to undertake such an onerous task but also be clearly mandated. Ostensibly not much thought and introspection has gone into the whole process.

By definition, negotiating from a position of weakness with those who have a clear-cut agenda of their own and are even willing to give their life for it cannot be easy. The TTP thanks to the inertia of the civilian as well as military leadership in the past has an upper hand. In terms of audacious terrorist attacks on military personnel as well as civilians the month of January was especially bloody.

After recent military action against the militants in N Waziristan it seemed that the security forces had embarked upon a scorched earth policy clearly with the blessings of the government. But now after the surprise announcement of Taliban sympathizers masquerading as the negotiating team it seems that the recent operation was just a flash in the pan.

Surely Sharif must have taken the military leadership on board before deciding to exercise the negotiation option. It could possibly mean that the government simply wants to buy more time before it decides to use force.

But the end game in Afghanistan has already commenced and the country is being torn asunder by rampant terrorism by the very forces with whom we want to negotiate. Do we have the luxury of time? Former COAS Gen Ashfaq Kayani was fond of saying, “The Americans have the watches and the Taliban have the time.”

Hopefully it does not apply to the hapless Pakistani leadership. If the objective is simply self-preservation, it’s not going to work by delaying the inevitable.