On way to surrender

What is the purpose of the TTP’s one-month ceasefire?

The government first agreed to give TTP the status of a stakeholder. Now it has entered into a ‘ceasefire’ with it. Both the steps amount to compromising and downgrading the authority of the state. What the PML-N leadership has done is to agree to hold talks on gun point with a group of murderers instead of employing the coercive machinery of state to establish the government’s writ. Governments hold talks only with groups which employ peaceful means to pursue their goals, not with those who have raised armed wings and continue to indulge in terrorist activities.

And what is the purpose of the one month long ‘ceasefire’ announced by the TTP? The network wants to buy time by keeping the government involved in talks while it reactivates its sleeper cells in cities and redeploys its squads of killers. Nine months are now left for the foreign troops to leave Afghanistan. After that, Pakistan’s army will have to cope with the joint force of the TTP and thirty odd terrorist groups enjoying strategic depth in neighbouirng Afghanistan and having the backing of Mullah Omar’s Taliban and the Haqqani and Hikmatyar networks.

Ceasefires are signed between armies that follow international laws of warfare formulated by civilised nations and not with criminals and cutthroats who behead soldiers taken prisoner and who treat Geneva Conventions with contempt as they do the constitution of the country.

The TTP has dissociated itself from, but has not denounced, the attack on Islamabad district court. This is the same stance as the one it adopted about the terrorist attack on Peshawar’s All Saints Church in September last year. The TTP said it had not killed the over 80 worshippers in the church but it would not condemn the act as it was in accordance with sharia. Perhaps the TTP considers the attack on Islamabad court also to be in to be line with its peculiar sharia’s directives.

The interaction between the government and TTP is an outstanding example of the tail wagging the dog.

The TTP has expressed no remorse for the beheading of FC soldiers in the custody of its Mohmand chapter or the desecration of their bodies. Was this too in accordance with its shariah? Similarly, it has not condemned the attack on police personnel killed while escorting polio teams in Khyber Agency and the killing of six FC personnel in the Hangu suicide blast claimed by Ansarul Muslimeen.

It is widely known that every terrorist network, be it Ansarul Muslimeen, Ahrarul Hind or LeJ, has headquarters in Fata. The TTP leadership therefore knows about their whereabouts. Had there been an iota of sincerity in the its desire to resolve the issues through talks it would have taken action against the groups. That it has not done so indicates its connivance with these groups.

The sympathisers of terrorists want the military strikes to be stopped and the talks to continue. ‘We’ll talk to those who talk, fight those who fight’. The government has half heartedly called on the TTP to point out those who attacked the Islamabad court. The TTP has taken recourse to familiar ruses. The attacks have been launched by the CIA and RAW agents or by elements in government agencies who don’t want talks to succeed, says Shahidullah Shahid. This implies that the government should either join hands with the TTP to fight the US and India and Pakistan’s intelligence agencies or catch those responsible itself.

The Khyber Pukhtikhwa information minister has thanked the Talban for their magnanimity to agree to hold talks, calling it an “extraordinary opportunity” that the government must seize upon “without giving up to pressure from any foreign power.” As Churchill once put it, “An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.”

What is the sense in holding dialogue with the TTP when there is no change in its point of view? In his latest remarks to the media Shahidullah Shahid asserted categorically that the life of the ceasefire would depend on whether our demands are accepted, the implementation of the sharia being the foremost.

And why should there be any flexibility on the terrorists’ part when the government is willing to dance to their tune? It is not the government that sets the agenda but the Taliban. The drone strikes bleed the terrorists. The terrorists tell government to stop them. Ch Nisar chimes in and the prime minister raises the issue in the UN general assembly.

The worst thing to happen now would be the inclusion of the army in peace talks as reported by the media.

Days after the government’s promise to launch peace negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban, Maj Gen Sanaullah is killed. A jubilant Mullah Fazlullah accepts responsibility. “This incident has dealt a serious blow to the peace process”. Unable to defend the TTP, Interior Minister Nisar tells parliament: “We have come to a standstill.” “It is quite disturbing”. Soon the TTP makes an offer for talks. The government jumps at the offer forgetting the high profile killing. Within weeks Ch Nisar announces that preliminary work for Taliban talks has been completed.

In November Hakimullah Mehsud is killed. Taliban withdraw the offer for talks and again tell the government to get drone attacks stopped. An obliging interior minister wants a categorical policy statement from Washington before he sends a delegation of Ulema to the Taliban.

Mullh Fazlullah, the new TTP chief initially refuses to hold talks. A couple of months later Taliban agree to parleys. The government welcomes the offer. Despite the TTP’s insistence on sharia and nothing but sharia, the government tells the nation talks would be held within the parameters of the constitution.

The TTP demands an end to military strikes which hurt as they have killed some of its operatives and destroyed its IED factories and ammunition dumps. The government promptly obliges.

The government has no strategy to counter terrorism. The TTP has one. It wants the army to get out of Fata so that the terrorists are able to set up their emirate and enforce their primitive version of Sharia. The interaction between the government and TTP is an outstanding example of the tail wagging the dog. This is bound to happen when the government has no roadmap to guide it

The worst thing to happen now would be the inclusion of the army in peace talks as reported by the media. Nawaz Sharif meets the COAS every other day. By now one expects both having understood each other’s assessment of the situation and worked out a common stand. Including the military personnel in the talks would imply that the government is not in a position to commit on behalf of the institution because the latter acts independently of the elected government.

And what are we going to discuss in the talks? How to replace the consensus constitution with sharia? How to facilitate jihad against enemies of Islam like India, China, Russia, the US and shiite Iran? Handing over the entire tribal belt to the terrorists by removing the army from a part of the country? Is this not an agenda of the surrender of the authority of state?