Talks about talks

The dithering may have finally ended as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on October 31 that the process of dialogue with the Taliban has begun. He expressed the hope that it would progress “within the constitutional framework of the country”, as indeed he should because it could well be that the constitutional framework is one of the subjects on the table for discussion.



The Taliban have made it very clear that the withdrawal of American troops or the cessation of drone strikes is not the core issue for them. They perceive the state of Pakistan as being out of step with their interpretation of what a Muslim country should look like, and want a state that is run according to sharia law in every respect. They have said that they have no intention of disarming nor of ceasing to wage war against the state until their goals are realised. From a position as uncompromising as that, there appears to be little ‘wiggle room’ within which to conduct a productive dialogue.

Quite apart from the question of the rightness or otherwise of conducting negotiations from a position of weakness with a basket of groups that have killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians over the years, there is the crucial matter of just who it is that the government proposes talking to. Whilst the TTP is the franchise title, under that umbrella many flags fly. Taliban groups frequently have territorial and ideological differences between themselves that erupt into bloody fighting. There are considerable differences between the Punjabi Taliban and the Taliban groups of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa that are exclusively Pashtun. Although the TTP has a designated spokesman — and even that position is open to conflict and question — that person does not speak for the Taliban as a homogenous group. Thus we ask just who it is that the government is going to talk to when talks about talks — and as yet there has been no indication of who is doing the groundwork on the government side — actually begin. There is little or no transparency attached to the process and if ever there was a need for openness, now is the hour.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 2^nd, 2013.

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