All that the TTP seems to be doing is to buy time to regroup and consolidate and prepare itself for fighting.
ISLAMABAD: Despite bearing a heavy infrastructural, human and national loss for over a decade, the Pakistani government has given the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) another chance for a dialogue. The debate over peace talks with the TTP came after the mandate of the All Parties Conference (APC) in September 2013. Since the announcement of peace talks, the country has been wracked and ruined by terror attacks in one way or the other. To its credit, the government has been successful in getting a temporary ceasefire. The question is how far any deal that is reached will facilitate in restoring permanent peace within the set parameters of the Constitution.
On the one hand, the TTP will not accept anything less than implementation of Sharia and, on the other, the government will not budge from the constitutional position. There seems to be no meeting point and neither side, one would assume, is willing to make any concessions. All that the TTP seems to be doing is to buy time to regroup and consolidate and prepare itself for fighting when the talks ultimately fail.
What will actually happen is anybody’s guess. Succumbing to the TTP’s demands is bound to lead to public outrage given that thousands of Pakistanis have lost their lives at the hands of the TTP and its affiliated groups. All we can really do is keep our fingers crossed.
Haroon M Janjua
Published in The Express Tribune, April 16th, 2014.
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