Why did PM form a low-profile team for talks with TTP?

 ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has deliberately constituted a low-profile committee consisting of modest non-governmental figures to hold peace talks with the Taliban because he believes that the inclusion of some high-profile cabinet ministers or military officials in the committee would give a wrong message to the rebel militants and may encourage them further.

According to well-informed government sources, who are privy to inside developments, the prime minister was advised not to include any cabinet minister or military official in the committee because dispatching a high-profile team for peace talks would not only give more confidence to the already defiant Taliban, it would also leave the government dysfunctional.

The prime minister was reminded by his close aides that peace deals and ceasefires had been brokered in the past but almost all of them were violated quickly by none other than the Taliban, be it the 2004 Shakai deal signed between Nek Mohammad and the then Corps Commander Peshawar Lt Gen Mohammad Safdar or the 2008 Swat peace accord signed between Mullah Fazlullah and the ANP-led government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The sources said that the prime minister was told by his political aides as well as khaki officials that dispatching high-profile government representatives to hold dialogue with those who are responsible for the deaths of thousands of the security forces personnel and civilians, would make them believe that they have succeeded in their endeavour to force the government of Pakistan to surrender at the barrel of the gun.

Therefore, it was decided not to include any cabinet minister, a ruling party leader or a military official in the four-member committee. Instead, the task of holding talks was given to those who have nothing to do with the government; are non-controversial, modest and largely acceptable to the militants.

Interestingly, two of the four committee members are well-respected senior journalists - Irfan Siddiqi and Rahimullah Yousafzai, despite the fact that the TTP recently issued a fatwa against the national media and a hit-list of journalists and publishers. The 29-page fatwa accused the media of siding with “disbelievers” against Muslims in the “ongoing war on Islam”. The edict further alleged that the Pakistani media is inciting people against “mujahideen” through propaganda and propagating promiscuity and secularism.

The TTP hit-list reportedly carries names of around two dozen journalists and publishers including several owners of media groups, news heads of television channels, senior TV anchors, etc.

The sources say, while forming the four-member committee, the government side kept in mind the contents of a letter written in 2004 by the political agent of South Waziristan to the Governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, opposing then Corps Commander Peshawar L Gen Mohammad Safdar’s intentions to travel to the Shakai area of South Waziristan; meet Taliban Commander Nek Mohammad and sign a peace deal with him on behalf of the Pakistan Army.

The political agent had warned the Governor in his letter that there exists a civil administration in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and an established manner in which the state deals with unruly tribesmen. He further argued that even if the Corps Commander wanted to strike a deal with Nek Mohammad, there was a way to go about it. The political agent wrote that he would have his naib tehsildar arrest and lock up Nek Mohammad for a few days before offering him a deal that could be formalised in the presence of the Corps Commander.

He warned that if a high-ranking military official like the Corps Commander Peshawar would show up at Nek Mohammad’s place, it would encourage seditious militants, render the political agent’s office dysfunctional and wipe out the vestige of state authority in the tribal belt.

However, the Governor and the Corps Commander disagreed and the matter was referred to General Pervez Musharraf who subsequently allowed the Corps Commander to run the show. Lt Gen Safdar consequently met Nek Mohammad and concluded the infamous Shakai peace deal with him in April 2004, even though the political agent had refused to accompany him.

The advice given by the political agent was prophetic as hardly 24 hours after signing the deal, Nek Mohammad, in an interview, reiterated his commitment to al-Qaeda and the Taliban which clearly meant that the peace deal he had signed was dead. Just a few weeks later, on June 18, 2004, as Nek made public his intentions to kill Gen Musharraf, he was eliminated in a missile attack which was in fact the first American drone strike in Pakistan.However, Lt Gen Safdar refused to learn anything from that episode and signed yet another peace deal on February 7, 2005 - this time with the founding ameer of the TTP, Baitullah Mehsud. About 1000 people, including the locals, the government and the military officials, attended the signing ceremony of the deal near the Sararogha Fort in the Wana area of South Waziristan. The signing ceremony ended with Lt Gen Safdar declaring Baitullah “a soldier of peace” and the militants raising loud slogans of Allah-o-Akbar and Death to America.

As part of the Sararogha peace pact, Baitullah Mehsud had pledged not to provide any assistance to al-Qaeda and Taliban militants and not to launch attacks against Pakistani security forces.

As the deal gave Baitullah a free hand to recruit and motivate more and more youngsters, the strength of his private army in South Waziristan went up from 1000 to about 20,000 within weeks, enabling him to virtually establish an independent state in South Waziristan. Within a year of the pact, Baitullah’s private army gunned down over 120 pro-government tribal leaders of his area on charges of spying for the American and the Pakistani agencies. But his biggest success came on August 30, 2007 when his private army captured 200 soldiers of the Pakistan Army in South Waziristan. He subsequently demanded the withdrawal of the security forces and the release of his comrades in exchange for freeing the soldiers.

As three abducted soldiers were beheaded in the next three days, Musharraf ordered the release of 25 hardcore Taliban militants who were already under trial on terrorism charges. The remaining hostages were released in the first week of November 2007. The peace deal was thus effectively over. As the khakis finally learnt the lesson, the ANP-led government signed two separate peace deals in 2008 - the first one with Maulana Sufi Mohammad and the second with his son in law, Mullah Fazlullah. But as expected, the pact was discarded very soon by the Taliban, prompting the PPP government to order a decisive military action in Swat in May 2009 against the jehadi mafia in the valley which had taken hostage the local populace.

Two months later, in July 2009, the Pakistan Army achieved its main objective in Swat by recapturing its administrative seat of Mingora which had been seized by the private army of Fazlullah.

The armed forces’ victory in Swat was crucial from the point of view of a larger front which al-Qaeda and Taliban linked militants had been trying to create in Swat which is just 160 kilometres from Islamabad.

Almost five years later, it appears that a Swat-like decisive military operation in Waziristan will be the only option left for the state of Pakistan to restore its lost writ, once the option of peace talks finally fails.