PESHAWAR: Discussions on whether talks should be held with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or not have been going on for far too long and as the drawdown approaches and the endgame starts shaping up, the communicative process should start dominating the battleground. The Americans have been involved in talks with militants for a while now with talking sessions having taken place between the Taliban and the US representatives. The Taliban have been given the status of a major stakeholder in the post-2014 future of Afghanistan. Therefore, any idea of peace and harmony in the region would have to be associated with them. The Taliban office in Qatar had been set up specially to facilitate the process.
Further, the Afghan peace council has been found pampering the Taliban by succumbing to every demand they make, such as releasing of key Taliban figures from jail for the sake of peace. The recent all-parties conference sponsored by the JUI-F is being marked as the official beginning of the peace process by the Pakistani side. Further, the governor of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has declared his office as the centre for reconciliation, which indicates that this time, the authorities and politicians mean business.
It must be realised that the war we have fought for so long, needs to be owned by the state and steps have to be taken by the authorities to bear tangible results. The army may have been the active force in combating terrorism but to expect that handing over the peace process to them would yield similar result is sheer stupidity. Wars are fought between states while armies serve as subservient forces to their states, so it would be better if they are kept in their place while the state establishes and exercises its own writ in all matters of significance, including the peace process.
Professor Kabil Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, March 7th, 2013.
