Pakistan's Nawaz regime & Taliban: 'A growing liability'

The government’s inexplicable desire to purse negotiations with the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the face of rising public anger and a growing list of terrorist attacks is becoming a liability for the country. Since the announcement of a ceasefire by the TTP on Sunday, there have been at least four terrorist attacks, mostly against military personnel in regions bordering the tribal areas. The most dramatic was Monday’s attack on the district courts in the heart of the federal capital, Islamabad, which left 12 people dead. The terrorists targeted the chambers of a judge who had the temerity to dismiss a blasphemy case and turned down a murder petition against Pervez Mushrraf for the former President’s role in the 2007 Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) incident, which was the cassus belli for certain militant groups to form the TTP and is their rallying cry for fighting the state. The attack was soon claimed by a TTP splinter group, Ahrarul Hind, allegedy opposed to negotiations. In the wake of this, and with nothing but TTP denials as a show of good faith, the government is still pursuing negotiations with terrorists who have clearly stated their ambition to overthrow the constitution and subject Pakistan to their bizarre form of Islam. The PPP, though opposed to negotiations in the beginning, has taken the government’s side after the ceasefire and says it will support a negotiated peace if one is possible, though it is hard to see what has changed. Familiar platitudes like ‘foreign hand’ are once more being trotted out, despite their lack of substance. This is music to the ears of the TTP and their sympathisers, who seemed terrified by the prospect of a full scale military action and begged for a ceasfire after rapid destruction of their infrastructure by targeted air strikes. The lesson is clear: the terrorists will not negotiate with a state they do not respect militarily, because violence is the only form of communcation they are interested in. Even a negotiated settlement, that tries to sift reconcilable from irreconcilable terrorists, will only hold so long as the TTP also agrees to dismantle extremist religious seminaries and other terrorist infrastructure in the tribal areas, something they will be loathe to do.

The question really is, who is the government trying to prove its legitimacy to — the millions of voters and citizens who repose their trust in the state and oppose the TTP and their religious agenda, or the minority of vocal clerics and critics who see an opportunity to expand their personal power at the expense of the state? The people of Pakistan voted for a government to represent their concerns, not play nice with vested interests who use violence and murder to achieve their goals. Twelve innocent civlians are dead because in the eyes of the TTP or their kindred they, and millions more people, are not innocent or people. To the TTP they are meat and the higher the body count, the happier the terrorists are. The fallacy that the TTP are pursuing negotiations while a large number of ‘splinter groups’ continue attacking should be obvious to the government by now. The truth is simple: if these men are willing to blow themselves up on command, then they are also willing to take the hits from a military strike while the core of the TTP remains protected under a ceasefire, with plausible deniability. The evidence of this strategy is apparently not so obvious to the government, which seems to consider the murder of 12 citizens no reason to subject the militants to the full military force of the state. Will we only see action when members of the government itself are killed? Or are the public to continue to bear the weight of blood that government officials avoid through extravagant secrity measures? Perhaps they should feel secure enough in their own strategy to not remain barricaded behind miles of barbed wire while ordinary citizens are blown to pieces, and see how long they last when one of the TTP’s ‘splinter groups’ comes calling. It appears Mr. Sharif has forgotten who it was that voted him into power and while trying to prove to terrorists that he’s serious about negotiations, is ignoring public demands that he get serious about ending terrorism.