Imtiaz Gul
Talking to TTP will not bring any good without decoupling the outfit from the masterminds of the proxy war, writes Imtiaz Gul.
Prime Minister Imran Khan’s revelation about talks between the government and “some factions of the TTP” has generated considerable debate as to whether and how this should have happened. This calls for a dispassionate debate if one were to go by how major terrorist-driven conflicts eventually morphed into political parties. Before going into the merits or otherwise of the Pakistani government’s decision – which caused Afghan Taliban chief Mulla Hibbatullah to send his people to TTP to urge them for a break in anti-Pakistan violence – we must remember that organizations once designated as terrorist entities went on to become partners for peace; once a wanted global terrorist, Yasir Arafat , the charismatic leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, had gone on to win the Nobel Peace Prize following the Oslo Accords.
Talking To TTP: A Background of Talks With Other Outfits
The African National Congress – treated as a terrorist organization by the apartheid regime of South Africa – eventually negotiated its way into peace with the same regime and became the ruler of South Africa. As a terrorist organization responsible for killing countless innocent citizens the Irish Republican Army (IRA) had to agree to create its political wing Sinn Fein that helped the UK hammer out the Good Friday agreement with IRA in 2010. Back in early 1980s, many members of the far-leftist German Red Army Faction (RAF), which had been involved in violence and acts of terrorism, either arrested, convicted, disappeared from the scene or renounced violence to became part of the political mainstream once they saw no future. The group had kidnapped and assassinated prominent political and business figures and had links with former socialist East German secret service STASI. It was formally disbanded in 1998.
Similarly, the Basque separatist movement ETA – also responsible for scores of terrorist activities – was formally disbanded in May 2018 after dozens of rounds of talks and persuasion by the Spanish government as well as the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. The move marked the end of a half-century of violence that had claimed the lives of more than 800 people.
Some of the fiercest militants – for long treated as terrorists – of the Moro National Islamic Front in the Philippines’ Muslim majority Mindanao region also became members of President Duterte’s cabinet in 2019, following decades of talks and the eventual renunciation of violence.
Let us now consider if Pakistan can also achieve what others did? And if it can really achieve the desired results because the German IRA literally died with the death of the socialist East Germany. So did ETA. PLO also submitted to talks when it found little real support even among major Muslim countries.
So, when PM Nawaz Sharif agreed to open talks with the TTP in March 2014, many, including myself, opposed it on the pretext that the group was a proxy outfit. No amount of persuasion would deter them from their task assigned to them by external string-pullers.
The Fate Of The Peace Deal With TNSM
Earlier in February 2009, following approval by President Asif Ali Zardari, the ANP government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had signed a peace deal with Maulana Soofi Mohammad (TNSM) after negotiations of several months. The prelude to this deal was a meeting of all big at the Prime Minister’s House in mid 2008 – Yousaf Raza Gilani, Asif Ali Zardar, ANP bigwigs Asfandyar Wali and Afrasiab Khattak, General Ashfaq Kayani, the then ISI chief General Ahmed Shuja Pasha inter alia. The ANP had wanted to try the talks, Zardari and Gilani consented. So did the army high command. But the TTP literally destroyed the deal with the late Soofi through its successive attacks across the province.
Even then, we had extensively written and spoken about the futility of this agreement. It amounted to knocking at the wrong door because TNSM had lost relevance to the deadly TTP (Swat/Bajaur) led by Mulla Fazlullah, the agent in chief of Baitullah Mehsud. The deal fell through within days, if not weeks, just as the talks with TTP broke down later in 2014. The reason was simple; behind the façade of demands for Sharia and severing ties with the United States what Pakistan in reality faced was a proxy war that had meanwhile gained momentum, with its disruptive demoralizing suicide attacks and ambushes of Pakistani security forces and civilians at large. We had argued then that unless it can be decoupled entirely from the masterminds of the proxy war, talks with the TTP meant little.
Talking To TTP: What To Do With Proxy Wars?
The carnage at the Army Public School in December that year proved us right. The problem actually lay some where else. It was in fact an anti-Pakistan, anti-Army campaign that had seen devastating attacks with high casualties on three regional ISI headquarters including those in Lahore and Peshawar, the GHQ, Churches and Mosques. Sharia was only a veil to this proxy terror campaign spearheaded by the TTP, which then went on to split into franchises such Jamaatul Ahrar, Ahrarul-Hind, Daesh / ISIK. So, while pursuing peace through talks is an internationally practiced mechanism for ending militancy, the question facing the government is: Will TTP abandon its intrinsic nature i.e. the proxy role it has been playing? Secondly, will the Afghan Taliban walk the talk to drain the TTP and other proxy outfits of the oxygen they get on the Afghan territory? Does the Afghan regime possess the capacity to demobilize, disrupt and shunt out all those terrorist groups that are a continuous source of concern for immediate neighbors such as Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan/Russia and China?
Thirdly, how will the government ensure the TTP’s permanent break from its external drivers? Obviously sowing fear and causing instability have been at the center of this inimical campaign against Pakistan. Fourth, how will the security agencies monitor those who abandon the path of violence? Even if the enemy refuses to budge from sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan, does the security apparatus have the capability to keep the instruments of terrorism in check? Lastly, what plans of socio-economic rehabilitation and mainstreaming, if any, does the government propose for the surrendering TTP militants? Real success will probably depend on comprehensive answers to the aforementioned questions for a journey that is fraught with multiple precarious pitfalls.
