What is there to talk about?

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) delights in showing us off as a helpless and contemptible force. So last week, when the TTP’s offer of peace talks hit the newswires we perked up. But on discovering the TTP expected us to accept their version of the Shariah in return for a ceasefire, many switched off because that’s out of the question. Our stance rightly requires the TTP to renounce violence and accept the constitution of Pakistan so I, for one, dismissed it as another TTP propaganda stunt.

Others were happy and excited by the offer. In fact, they wrote and recommended the government accept it in the hope that a compromise could be reached. Party leaders also welcomed the ceasefire offer, including Asfandyar Wali Khan, whose party has borne the brunt of TTP attacks.

In fact, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the ANP information minister in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, went as far as to say that those opposed to talks with the TTP were badly mistaken. The spokesman for Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) felt the offer ‘vindicated’ the PTI’s stance that negotiations, rather than force, was the way out and that Imran Khan had been saying this since December 2009.

These widely different responses reflect the substantial gap between two segments of the population. Pakistan is split – not evenly – but divided nevertheless, between those who harbour an understandable, albeit organic and untameable, hatred of the TTP, on the one hand, and another segment which seems prepared to pay almost any price for a ceasefire.

In the view of the former group, what we are being offered by the TTP is the prospect of women masked and confined to their homes; men gagged from questioning and forced to constrain their thoughts and opinions; to subordinate principal to expediency and to live a life, not as we feel we should, but what we know to be despicable and to acknowledge that will be our fate for the rest of our lives, in return for an assurance not to be murdered at will. And this group is increasingly worried that it is being outnumbered by shallow and craven men who will grasp at any straw the enemy offers in the mistaken hope of saving their skin.

Such fears feed into the TTP’s view (hence the peace offer) that a large chunk of the populace is essentially with them. And that a diminished and brittle state, poorly governed and tottering, and which has an addiction for compromise, is being prevented from cutting a deal by ‘secular’ elements at home and their foreign masters. A view supported by the demand of one prominent politician that the TTP be allowed to open an office in Pakistan to facilitate negotiations.

It was depressing to read, therefore, that the military also intended to discuss the TTP ‘peace offers’ at a corps commanders meeting on January 4 and wanted “the political leadership to formulate a response to the militant’s suggestion” even though “the army doubts the seriousness of the offer and sees the attempt (simply) as an attempt to ward off pressure…generated on the terrorist group by the army’s counter-terrorism operations and notwithstanding the fact that similar ceasefires in the past failed miserably” and even though there are so many different groups of TTP bigots hanging about in our cities and the countryside that it is difficult to know who to negotiate with.

In other words, the army does not think the TTP offer is serious and that, much like the past five ceasefires negotiated with the TTP, any future ceasefire is also likely to fail. Furthermore, it does not know who it should negotiate with, Hakimullah Mehsud or Asmatullah Muavia. But what it does know is that the conditions imposed by the TTP violate the constitution and as the army chief has conceded terror groups “constitute the biggest threat to Pakistan’s security”. And yet the army not only proposes to examine the TTP offer but is also prodding the government to do so. Why? Because of apprehensions it may be criticised for not latching on to offers by those believing that the truce offer could provide a break in the violence unleashed by the TTP.’

Any doubts that the army is a political party or, at least, thinks and acts like one, should have been put to rest by these words of ‘a senior military officer’ made to a journalist of a leading national daily and published on January 3.

The army, it appears, is even more concerned about public opinion than the elected government, the PPP segment of which initially dismissed the TTP offer out of hand. No doubt, Zardari will now re- focus on the issue, indeed information minister Kaira has already made that clear and, once GHQ makes up its mind, will inevitably toe the line. As for the other parties, barring the MQM, even as the TTP continues slaughtering their workers and heads literally roll, it is not anger but a yearning for a ceasefire that grows. Clearly they are a forgiving lot; they readily forget how much we have to forgive.

Whatever the agreement reached with the TTP over the Shariah matter, it won’t work. The fact is that Islam is as plural as any other religion. There are over a hundred sects in Islam, even Sunnis have as many of four ‘maslaks’ to which they can choose to belong and each is further sub divided. The Barelvis and the Deobandis, for example, belong to the same Hanafi ‘maslak’ but are often at each other’s throats. That has been the situation since eons and it’s absurd to think it will change.

So what is there to talk about? Are we getting ready to join the TTP in the fight against sin by not listening to music, not watching movies and keeping our daughters away from school? By oppressing and suppressing fellow citizens only because they are Shia or Sunni? We hear, ad nauseam, of the TTP being fellow citizens, but so too is the common murderer. Why then should the TTP be feted and he hanged? And does anyone really believe they will be as sparing of us if the boot was on the other foot?

The reason we are not winning the war is simple: we don’t deserve to. We have not given our people their rights. Had we done so and provided them education, health, infrastructure and jobs we would have been entitled to victory. We should still aspire to that goal, as there is no better antidote to bigotry than a contented population, but rather than doing that some seek the easy way out.

How typical. We parley (TTP) when we should fight, and fight (Mujib) when we should parley; we beg (IMF) rather than save; we surrender (Dhaka) rather than fight; we give up the ghost in two weeks (1965) and not ‘a thousand years’, etc, etc. That, alas, has been the yardstick with which our enemies also judge us. We must break the mould, or else history will repeat itself.

The fact is that our constitution and laws are Islamic in every respect. We are bound to treat our citizens equally regardless of religion and sect. That has been our stance, let’s stick to it. There is nothing to negotiate but a lot to fight for. As for the danger of a civil war that so scares some, we are already in one, so let’s win it.

The writer is a former ambassador. Email:charles123it@hotmail.com