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Monday, October 7, 2013

Dialogue ends before it starts


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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