After passing of the joint resolution by the All Parties
Conference (APC) on September 9, 2013 in favour of a dialogue process with the
militants, three big terrorists’ incidents have taken place in Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa: Killing of 3 senior officers of the Pakistan Army including a
Major General on September 15, two suicide attacks on All Saints’ Memorial
Church on September 22 and Qessa Khwani Bazar’s explosion on September 29.
Meanwhile, PM Nawaz Sharif, while addressing to the 68th
session of the General Assembly at UN headquarters on September 27 urged upon
the US to stop drone strikes. Another stronger statement was issued by PTI’s
Chief Imran Khan later on October 4 wherein he demanded the government to take
the issue of drone strikes to UN Security Council.
Soon after PM’s speech in the UN four suspected militants
were killed in drone strikes in North Waziristan. Taliban’s spokesman
Shahidullah Shahid termed these attacks as violation of ceasefire because
according to him drones attacks were carried out with the tacit support of the
Pakistani government. It should be reminded that right now no military
operation in any part of Pakistan is being conducted against the militants.
The political leadership in Pakistan is trying its best to
create an environment for dialogues but the Tahreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is
more pragmatic in its approach. The Taliban know that a dialogue process with
the Pakistan government would be a futile exercise as according to them the US
presence in Afghanistan would continue to be a major hurdle in their aims and
objectives and that the US would continue striking them through drones. Thus
they continue their destruction against the Pakistani state and its people.
The US on the other hand has a very clear policy about drone
strikes. It favours a significant decrease in drone strikes but it has very
categorically expressed its continuation till the end of 2014 and may be
beyond. The drones are so far very successful from US point of view in rooting
out key Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
The US has mostly ignored the peace deals with the militants
by the Pakistan Army but it had pressurized the provincial government of ANP
not to have any peace deal with the militants in Swat. It may be that the US
does not want a political recognition of the Taliban by Pakistan. It may also
be the case that the US has no such authority to initiate and accept a dialogue
process without the prior consent of the democratic government in Afghanistan.
The collapse of recent peace talks of the US and Afghan Taliban suggests that
Afghan government would never allow the US to give recognition to Taliban
without forcing them to accept the constitution of Afghanistan. Thus without
having an intra-Afghan dialogue process, an intra-Pakistan dialogue process is
unimaginable and the TTP would never agree with a dialogue process until
Pakistani government forces the US to stop drone strikes.
Pakistan is a poor economy and its political leadership is
too weak to have full control on state institutions. Therefore, it is less
likely that Pakistan would be able to persuade the international community to
end drone strikes. Even if US agrees on ending drone strikes it would ask for
our commitment to force Taliban to accept the constitution of Afghanistan. The
later is just a remote possibility.
Thus the APC’s recommendations would be having little impacts
on changing the status quo. However, procrastination on the part of Pakistan in
either initiating a dialogue process or a full-scale military operation may
likely to give the militants an upper-hand in FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. We
may likely to see the writ of the state further weakened on the peripheries and
growing insecurity and economic melt-down in the center.
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