TALK WITH TALIBAN: Is the state negotiating from a position of weakness? The entire tone and tenor of the government’s public statements on dialogue suggests a weakness that appears to position the Taliban as the central player and the government as the outsider suing for peace. The TTP is hardly bashful about its exploits or unwilling to own the massive damage it has wrought on Pakistan, so it is more than a little puzzling that the government is trying to sell talks — to the country and to the TTP — without so much as naming the TTP and sans any reference to the death and destruction the TTP is responsible for. If anything, the government should take a page from the TTP’s negotiating book. Consider how the TTP projects confidence and certainty: it knows what it wants, it specifies who it will talk to and it makes clear what is and isn’t acceptable to it. It’s almost as if the TTP is the state and the government an illegitimate challenger to the status quo. On negotiations too, the TTP has indicated its core military demands: the handover of some 4,000 Taliban prisoners in Pakistani custody; an end to military operations in the tribal areas; a withdrawal of troops and a pledge to keep them in the barracks, Pay for their deaths and casualties — I wont be surprised if they demands for the imposition of the TTP’s version of Sharia and the TTP being allowed to continue to run its fiefdoms in the tribal areas. If the state concedes to any of those demands, it would amount to accepting the ideology of the militants — which would mean a surrender of the state itself, and that too to the Enemies of State, with in State. If the political leadership is reluctant to speak plainly to the TTP, it is also indulging in sophistry when speaking about them. The interior minister has trotted out an old canard with his suggestion that the fight against militancy was a result of Musharraf-era poli-cies. That is nonsense. Musharraf-era policies certainly compounded the problem of militancy, but they did not give birth to it. It started with the GRAND FATHER of Global Islamic Jihad, Gen. Zia. For General Knowledge of readers and our Interior minister. TTP claimed responsibility of Times Square bombing in May 2010 and attack on Camp Chapman on Dec 2009. (Now do not become a spokesman of TTP like Imran Khan and Munawar Hassan and mention TTP were not behind any bombing) This menace existed a significant militancy threat before Musharraf or drones, and there will continue to exist an even bigger one until the state is truthful, to itself, people and to the country.
Posted on: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 06:55:40 +0000
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