Militants are dictating their terms better than the government
A high level meeting presided over by the prime minister has decided to continue dialogue with the TTP but make it more meaningful by adhering to a formalised agenda. The purpose behind initiating talks with the outlawed TTP was to put an end to the ongoing terrorist attacks. There was however no respite to the attacks either during the so called ceasefire or afterwards. This month alone there were two major attacks resulting in double digit mortalities and several others where less than ten people died. Newspapers on Monday carried reports of an IED blast which left three security personnel including an army officer dead in Waziristan. In Peshawar, militants fired two rockets which exploded within the airport. In Bara threats from a Taliban group forced families to migrate to safer areas. In a third major attack in a week in Karachi, three children died in a madrassah blast while several others were injured. In Sadiqabad a low-intensity explosion under the railway track injured the driver and his assistant. A report in an English daily highlighted the issue of the migration of businessmen from Peshawar under threat of kidnapping for ransom to other parts of the country and in some cases out of the country.
What the committee appointed by the government has done, despite the good intentions of its members, is to put the state of Pakistan on an equal footing with the TTP. What is more, it allowed the militants to dictate the agenda. They have been allowed to get away with some of the most horrendous attacks, including the beheading of 23 troops, on one plea or another. The TTP had initially called into question, totally without reason, the status of the three high profile civilian prisoners on the plea that they belonged to parties with which the TTP was in a state of war, implying that they were in its custody. By sharing a video with the media the interior ministry has suggested that they might not be in TTP’s custody. While Shahidullah Shahid insists that the Taliban wouldn’t be waging a war against the government if they followed law or a constitution other than Islamic Sharia, the government’s negotiators claim the TTP is willing to hold talks within the parameters of the constitution.
There is no use of talks if attacks or kidnappings by the militants were to continue. The government committee needs to tell the TTP plainly that talks can only be held on a single item agenda of stopping all attacks. What is more, the Taliban have to deter other militant groups also from launching attacks from inside the tribal areas. The committee has no authority whatsoever to hold talks on issues like what kind of laws the country is to practice as the subject comes strictly under the purview of the Parliament.
Nawaz Sharif must be an optimist par excellence believing, and to continue trying to convince the rest of the nation that talks with Taliban will bring peace, where all the evidence is pointing in the opposite direction. The government inability to get the TTP even to extend the ceasefire despite releasing many Taliban while getting nothing in return, no good news from any one involved in the process, continued violence by the miliants, including killing of three soldiers in the latest attack, and the announcement of Major Amir, probably the only independent and capable person in the crowd, to dissociate himself from the so-called 'peace process' hardly substantiate Nawaz Sharif's claim.
And his comparison of Pakistani situation with that of the United Kingdom clearly indicates his lack of understanding of the issue because the two situations are not comparabe. While the UK problem concerned a limited area, Northern Ireland, the Taliban have ambitions to control the whole of Pakistan and establish their Emirate over it, and that is just for the start because, obviously, they have international ambitions. Moreover, violence by the Irish Republican Army was just a very, very small fraction of that perpetated by TTP, the IRA was not as strong or as deeply entrenched all over UK as TTP is in Pakistan, and the British government degraded the Irish militants sufficiently before starting negotiations whereas Nawaz Sharif's team has started the dialogue from a position of extreme weakness, ever-prepared to surrender to TTP demands. People have even started wondering which is the bigger threat to Pakistan, TTP or the bunch of appeasers headed by Nawaz Sharif.
Karachi
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