No end to violence in sight

As killing and maiming of innocent civilians mounted in recent months, so did the rhetoric of negotiation from some in the government and the Imran-Khan-led PTI. The logic, ostensibly, was that the scourge of terrorism cannot be eliminated by force alone so we need to talk about things. The likes of Ch. Nisar, federal interior minister and most influential PML-N leaders and Imran Khan managed to tap into the General  Zia-ul-Haq infested recesses of the masses mind that as long as someone is raising the slogan of Islam, they deserve some respect from our side. So the strategy was constructed: we will negotiate.

Those three words “we will negotiate” represented the entire strategy. There was no thinking beyond this. It was as if a couple confessed their love to each other and assumed, as some do, that declarations of love (rather than actions) will control the future. Spare a thought for the state of Pakistan and the federal government — the legitimacy of both is being mocked by the armed militants led by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). And there is no respite or answer in sight.

This was done without any thoughts being directed to the question of “what are our limits?”. Now the TTP has turned around and said that the imposition of Sharia law is a condition (precedent) for negotiations to take place. And till negotiations officially start, the TTP will merrily continue to kill and maim Pakistanis—in cinema houses, markets and hotels.

Do the advocates of negotiations even have an answer now?

What does it say about a state that seeks to talk to those who continue to kill? What does it say about the TTP’s allegedly bona fide intentions to negotiate? It is as if the government keeps stomping its feet after a bomb blast and says to the TTP, “okay, but this was the last time.” Until it happens again of course.

The religious extremist groups bought time from their sympathisers and, quite remarkably, a large number of people in this country started assuming that something actually could be achieved through negotiations. But it is a false assumption. The road to negotiations is going to be a long and bumpy one and the ride will be rough and tough. There are many contentious issues that will come up in the negotiations.

In this entire process, crucial questions remain unanswered. The most important is: what will happen to those Pakistanis who will live in the territories controlled by the TTP? Whose law will they live under? If the answer is the TTP’s, then we might as well just invite the TTP to Islamabad and hand over power in a grand ceremony. Maybe we could also squeeze in an under-pass’s inauguration in the same photo-op. No women should attend.

You also have to feel for the thousands of people rotting in jails for crimes such as murder. They must be ruing their luck; if only they had killed in the name of religion, the state of Pakistan would negotiate with them. Since those engaging in extortion and kidnapping in the name of religion deserve to sit across the table in dialogue with the state of Pakistan. Those of you planning heinous offences in the near future better be taking notes.

Pakistan’s history will most likely see this period as revealing of one particular fact: delusion about the benevolence of those who kill in the name of religion. It is quite staggering how so many have been fooled by so few and rendered indecisive. As far as negotiation strategy is concerned, TTP is giving us a real lesson.

From their fetid hovels of misery the masses search the skies for deliverance. In desperation they look towards their rulers, but these are men who quiver like maple leaves on a cold and windswept expanse in the face of the terrorist onslaught. From June 5, 2013, when Nawaz Sharif commenced his third prime ministerial term, till February 7, 2014 there have been 863 incidents of terrorism perpetrated by the Al-Qaeda backed TTP and its affiliates in which 1,403 people have lost their lives. The government has done nothing to take on these violent groups that kill, maim and destroy in the name of their false religion.

Since 2004, more than 46000 people have lost their lives and thousands have been injured and become disabled. More than 3000 security personal have lost their lives. The Pakistani economy has lost more than 68 billion US dollars as the result of this so called war and violence. The human and economic loss in Pakistan is far greater than the loss in Afghanistan since the US aggression on Afghanistan in 2002. The working masses continued to suffer because of this madness in the name of the religion and saving the state.

The real issue in this whole context is whether the Pakistani state wants to abandon its policy of using religion as political slogan and an instrument to repress the working masses. Whether it ready to stop the support for Jihadist organisations and groups like Taliban. The answer is that the Pakistani state is not ready to abandon its long time policy which was started in 1970s.

The problem with the Pakistani state at the moment is that it wanted to continue its reactionary policy and at the same time wanted to bring peace in the country. This contradiction is the hallmark of the Pakistani state policy. The Pakistani army on one hand is fighting against some Taliban groups and Al-Qaeda affiliated forces in tribal areas and the same time it continue to support some Taliban groups fighting in Afghanistan but has safe havens in Pakistan.

It has, instead, decided to pursue negotiations with the TTP in the hope that the outlawed group can be persuaded to abandon its goal of establishing an Islamic caliphate, lay down its weapons and pledge fealty to the constitution. Since this hare-brained scheme was announced by the prime minister on January 29, when he finally condescended to show up at the National Assembly after an absence of six months, the tempo of violence has not abated.

So this is the Pakistan where the standard response to a crisis seems to be to look at the person next to you and ask, “What do we do now?” You can imagine each person looking to the one next till the last one looks at the wall and then all keep staring at the wall.

When it comes to springing surprises, the federal government is giving everyone a run for their money. The Prime Minister’s recent speech on the way we will tackle (but not really) the threat of terrorism hit a stumbling block. He sounded like a man about to break off a relationship — only to turn around and say, “But I will still try to make it work, even though I have no clue how to go about it.”

Military Operation

Military action in North Waziristan may have some support and some indifference among the general population. But if it leads to more attacks in urban centres then the opposition will put the government on the mat. The PM, of course, knows this so he played politics by sounding tough but also by not giving the opposition another opportunity to attack his government.    On the one hand, the government passing draconian new laws such as the Protection of Pakistan Ordinance.

On the other, it inviting the terrorists to talk so that the state may be saved. The sheer lack of consistency in the thought process will not be lost on the TTP. They can see through the hollowness that the state breathes. The state of Pakistan seems to be promising a good punch — but realising that it cannot throw it right now.   A state that continues to exist with an army but is perennially imperiled by the threat of violence is no real state. An offer of negotiation that stems from a realisation that you cannot fight is not really an offer — it is a concession. Laws that promise strict punishment for militants but are applied only to ethnic separatists, nationalist armed groups and working class movements are mere instruments of oppression.

Both the military and civilian government is on the same page, about not launching a serious operation. The PML-N government is certainly not too eager because it has ideological and political stakes in the militants. The military does not seem too keen either; else, it would show at least some seriousness in sharing intelligence with the police and building it up to thwart militants present in the heartland.

Considering the government – Taliban committees show, its only purpose is to delay any serious armed conflict and tamp down terrorist activity till at least the end of the government elected last year. That will give enough time to this group of ‘kleptocrats’ to accumulate much more wealth before they withdraw to their palaces and mansions in London and Dubai leaving ordinary Pakistanis behind to deal with the Talibanisation of Pakistan.

The devil’s advocate

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) bagged an astonishing 7.7 million votes in the 2013 general elections. This was enough to make it the second highest vote-getter nationally after Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N, beating Asif Zardari’s PPP into the third place, becoming the third largest party in the National Assembly, and forming the government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The party, however, felt cheated, expecting a much better showing, resulting in Imran Khan becoming the prime minister to deliver on its singularly resonant promise of “change” that would free the country of inertia on the road to peace and good governance. The PML-N and PPP ended up banding together to deny Imran even the consolation prize of being the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly.

But Imran is back in contention with a game changer. His persistent narrative insisting on the state talking rather than fighting the Taliban into the way of peace has forced the much-derided and virtually abandoned option of talks with the Taliban from the jaws of imminent military action and onto the centre stage, instead.

However, the chairman of PTI has done something he would never have when he was on the cricket field — gone to the pavilion just when he was handed to deliver on the death overs. When the Taliban, benefiting from Imran’s support to their dubious argument of being a stakeholder in the state’s fate, named him on their committee to hold talks with the government, he excused himself. In short, he brought everyone to the table but skipped the seat at the proceedings, leaving others to share the blame.

Imran and his party’s convincing argument that he was the head of his own political party and, hence, could not possibly represent the Taliban is acceptable. But it is a bit self-serving that PTI and its chairman failed to extend the same logic to the fact that the Taliban also nominated leaders of Munawar Hassan’s JI, Fazlur Rehman’s JUI-F and Samiul Haq’s JUI-S to its team — there was no advice from Imran to either the Taliban or these parties to also not represent the Taliban. By the same yardstick, if he has no objection to them being Taliban’s representatives, how could he not ‘help’ the talks process by nominating a deputy to the Taliban team, if he was queasy about being on it himself?

It was Imran who forced an APC on talks when a majority in the parliament wanted action against the Taliban. It was Imran who then refused to attend the APC unless briefed personally by the army chief. It was Imran who droned on about drones killing the reluctant APC consensus on talks when the Taliban went on an especially vicious killing spree in the last few weeks instead of condemning the Taliban by name for the vicious rebellion.

He has never asked Taliban to hold fire — he has only been demanding the state to do so.He and his party have no qualms in embracing contradictions — the PTI core committee that declined Imran being on the Taliban team called for talks to be under the ambit of the constitution. And yet, under the constitution, private armed groups are banned. And Taliban have been declared a terrorist organisation by the state. The party also said Taliban did not consult PTI before naming Imran. So, are we to assume the Taliban consults them before their bloody attacks?

The fact of the matter is that among the non-religious parties, the PTI is the only one that has always opposed the military action against Taliban groups and never condemned the these groups for killing innocent civilian population.  Its policy is underpinned by appeasement and capitulation. This, in Imran’s estimation, is a less messy, more feasible option to taking actual responsibility and paying the inevitable higher price for peace by opting for a long-term solution.

There can be only two explanations for Imran’s politics of bipolarity — running with the hare and hunting with the hound. Either he is too scared to opt for a path that will bring with it a lot of pain and loss for which his party is not ready or that he is what many suspect — a genuine sympathiser of the Taliban who represent for him a better way to sidestep the messiness of politics that does not offer the same certainties as does cricket and that aligning himself with them buys him more influence than the prime minister does. He is the captain that does not lead from the front. He wants the reward but not the responsibility.

Imran Khan is very confused about religion. He suffers from romanticism about religious narrative without understanding what he is saying and means.