Dialogue with the devil

Maulana Abdul Aziz, the chief cleric of the Lal Masjid in Islamabad, has never hesitated in projecting himself as a religious scholar. He was catapulted to fame in July 2007 when the government belatedly decided to cleanse the mosque complex – which included the Jamia Hafsa, the world’s largest seminary for women – of Al-Qaeda inspired extremists who had terrorised the city.

The spineless Abdul Aziz abandoned hundreds of his associates to their fate and fled the scene disguised as a burqa-clad woman. Even Houdini (1874-1926), the illusionist and stunt performer famed for his sensational escapes, would have found it difficult to match this feat.

The Lal Masjid siege resulted, five month later, in the emergence of the TTP as an umbrella organisation initially consisting of 13 militant groups under the command of Baitullah Mehsud. He was declared Pakistan’s enemy number one and the US obliged by killing him in a drone strike on August 5, 2009. By the time his successor, Hakeemullah Mehsud, was also eliminated in a similar manner on November1 last year, more than 40 extremist outfits had joined the TTP.

The Lal Masjid tragedy is just one of the many wounds from which the country still bleeds. The difference is that it has become a point of reference for violent extremism; and it is the singular event that has been consistently evoked by the TTP for justifying its terrorist outrages. A hideous reminder of this was the suicide bomb attack on January 19 near the GHQ in Rawalpindi. The TTP spokesman triumphantly boasted that the carnage had been perpetrated “by one of our suicide bombers to take revenge for the Lal Masjid massacre and we will continue our struggle against the secular system.”

The selection of Maulana Abdul Aziz as a member of the TTP’s committee for talks with the government panel of negotiators was, therefore, expected. The confidence reposed in him by the Taliban was not misplaced. The farcical dialogue finally got underway on February 6 and yielded a clumsily worded joint statement incorporating the points put across by the two sides.

The government representatives insisted that the dialogue must be within the confines of the constitution and then thoughtlessly added that its scope would be “limited to the insurgency affected areas.” The implication in this treacherous formulation is that Islamabad could eventually be willing to cede control of the tribal regions to the TTP as it did in Swat in 2009. The suggestion was not lost on the Taliban as was evident from its subsequent 15-point response to the joint statement.

The TTP has tasted blood and it will never abandon violence till its objectives are achieved. This is the writing on the wall and nothing is likely to change despite the ongoing talks. The group was outlawed by the previous government on August 25, 2008 for perfectly valid reasons. It was earlier in that year that Baitullah Mehsud met the Al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in South Waziristan and an accord was reached to substantially increase the number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan. From 2003 to 2007 militants had killed 4,346 civilians and soldiers but after the Baitullah-Zawahiri meeting there was a precipitous rise in the number of fatalities and, till now, more than 40,000 men, women and children have been mercilessly slaughtered.

The commencement of the formal talks with the government was a red-letter day for the TTP – it had won the laurels of political legitimacy. Whatever hopes the initial meeting may have generated proved short-lived. Within hours Abdul Aziz addressed a press conference and ruled out any negotiations within the parameters of the constitution because the TTP was convinced that only the Quran and the Sunnah could be the basic law. He was roundly supported by the central spokesman of the TTP, Shahidullah Shahid, who told the media on February 7, “Maulana Aziz is not wrong in his stance. The war we are fighting is for the enforcement of Shariah…and the talks with the government are for the same objective.”

It is obvious that the TTP is determined to scrap the constitution and replace it with its absurd interpretation of Islamic law. The prime minister should have called off the talks because he has solemnly sworn to preserve, protect and defend the constitution. Pakistan hungers for a visionary leader – a statesman capable of rallying the people in support of a frontal assault against the ramparts of terrorism. But unfortunately the prime minister, undoubtedly a good man, is obsessed with building motorways, highways, underpasses, bypasses, flyovers and burrowing tunnels through the picturesque Margalla Hills of Islamabad – these are the dreams of a contractor, not of a statesman.

The essence of statesmanship is realism and this is what the prime minister must keep in mind as he stubbornly perseveres with his peace initiative towards the Taliban. An indication of what the TTP expects from the talks emerged last Sunday when its political shura, which had been meeting for two days under the leadership of its deputy emir, Sheikh Khalid Haqqani, came up with 15 demands.

These include: (i) the termination of drone strikes; (ii) the introduction of Shariah in the courts; (iii) Islamic education in public and private schools; (iv) the release of TTP and foreign Taliban prisoners; (v) reparation for property damage by drone attacks; (vi) handover control of the tribal areas to local forces; (vii) withdrawal of the army from the tribal agencies and the closure of check posts; (viii) criminal cases against the Taliban be ended; (ix) the release of government and TTP prisoners; (x) non-discriminatory rights between the rich and the poor; (xi) jobs for the victims of drone strikes; (xii) amnesty for Taliban commanders wanted by the government; (xiii) termination of relations with the US as well as support for its war against terrorism; (xiv) replacement of parliamentary democracy by an Islamic system and, finally; (xv) the abolition of interest (riba) in the banking system.

This fanciful laundry list – for it is nothing more than that – is nevertheless important inasmuch as it lays bare the folly of insisting, as the government’s panel of negotiators did, that the scope of the talks would be restricted to the insurgency affected areas. The response of the TTP is that it should be given control of the tribal agencies accompanied by the withdrawal of the army from the region. It sees this as only the first step in a journey fraught with violence that will lead to the extension of its writ over the entire country.

But all this seems to be lost on those perched in high places. On Thursday a close Nawaz Sharif aide excitedly whispered to me, although the news had already featured in the media, that the TTP’s political shura had finally given the thumbs up for a direct meeting with the government committee. He said that the group would be leaving for North Waziristan within two or three days.

He was least concerned that in the 16 days from January 29, when the prime minister announced his decision to give peace yet another chance, till February 14 there have been 35 terrorist attacks which have resulted in 134 fatalities. The TTP claimed responsibility for Thursday’s car bomb attack in Karachi that killed 13 policemen.

After the commencement of the talks this was the first terrorist outrage owned by the TTP. Any self-respecting government would have abandoned the dialogue and retaliated with force. But those at the helm are paralysed by fear. After all only a few days back Maulana Abdul Aziz told Bloomberg News that the TTP has as many as 500 female suicide bombers. One wonders how many of these women were indoctrinated at the Jamia Hafsa.

What emerges is that it is the insatiable lust for power that motivates the TTP. Its ambitions are camouflaged in slanted religious formulations on which its fraudulent ideology is anchored. This is easy to demolish because semi-educated clerics do not have the ability to grasp the subtle nuances of the Quran which emphasises that it is a book for “those who think.” But instead of exposing these distortions, the government is pressing ahead with its ill-advised dialogue with the devil.

The writer is the publisher ofCriterion Quarterly.

Email: iftimurshed@gmail.com