Breaking the ice again: In overture to TTP, PM reaches to Samiul Haq
On the last day of 2013, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif rushed to mend broken communication links with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), naming influential cleric Maulana Samiul Haq on Tuesday as the government’s point man and ice-breaker in the proposed negotiations.
The overture came nearly two months after the TTP leader Hakeemullah Mehsud was killed in a US drone attack on a North Waziristan compound. With Mehsud’s death, the dialogue process that the government intended to initiate with the militant outfit also collapsed.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif earlier met Maulana Samiul Haq and appealed for his assistance in bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table. However, officials neither confirmed nor denied the development.
The Taliban quickly rebuffed the government overture, saying it was not ready to engage in peace negotiations. It also questioned the credentials of the JUI-S leader and by extension his rival faction leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman as interlocutors.
Haq, the chief of his own faction of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, who wields some influence over the Taliban, had a one-on-one meeting with the prime minister.
Opening a channel of communication with the Taliban was at the top of their meeting’s agenda. Sources said Haq assured the premier that he would use his influence to ensure that the peace process gathered steam and headed in the right direction.
The prime minister has resumed a series of political consultations with leading political and religious luminaries in order to kick-start the negotiations process with the militants.
On Tuesday, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan also indicated that headway could be expected in negotiations with the Taliban in the coming days.
During his meeting with the JUI-S chief, PM Nawaz took Maulana Samiullah into confidence over the recent military action in the Waziristan region and invited him to get personally involved in the Taliban dialogue process.
Haq said that he would help to try and resolve the issue and that the core issue would be putting an end to drone strikes. Just 24 hours earlier, Prime Minister ordered officials to speed up the process of framing and promulgating anti-terror laws in the country.
JUI-F’s objections
Earlier in the year, the PML-N government had also invited Maulana Samiul Haq for facilitating the government’s peace negotiations with the Taliban. But the government later dropped his name from its preferred list of facilitators for the talks when the JUI-F chief’s voiced his reservations
The all parties conference had reposed confidence in the efforts of the prime minister and called upon the federal government “to initiate the dialogue with all stakeholders forthwith and for this purpose, authorise it to take all necessary steps as it may deem fit, including development of an appropriate mechanism and identification of the interlocutors.”
However, the implementation of last resolution hit snags when a US drone strike killed TTP chief Hakimullah Mehsud, hours before a government delegation was scheduled to formally invite Taliban for the talks.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 1st, 2014.
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