The continuous, vicious downward spiral of the economic crisis has exposed the hypocrisy and impotency of the elite. In a macabre scenario Pakistan seems to be plunging deeper and deeper into an irredeemable abyss of mayhem and devastation. The rulers are running out of excuses and diversions. Their indifference, callousness and utter contempt for the masses are so flagrant.Shahidullah Shahid, spokesperson of the Pakistani Taliban has announced that the 40-day ceasefire has been called off as the Pakistani government has continued to arrest people and has killed more than 50 people associated with the group. He goes on to say: “The talks will continue with sincerity and seriousness and in case there is clear progress from the government side, [the Taliban] will not hesitate to take a serious step.” The announcement comes three days after Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Pakistan’s interior minister, said the process was about to enter a “comprehensive” phase. The Taliban have demanded the release of hundreds of men and complete withdrawal of Pakistani troops from FATA, declaring it a “peace” area to be run by the Taliban. In other words, what the Taliban are demanding is a mini-state under their total influence where they can practice their outdated and obscurantist ideology. In response to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) decision not to extend the ceasefire, the government has decided to ‘slow down’ the dialogue process and adopt a ‘wait and see’ policy, following a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on National Security chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The committee decided that dialogue with the militants would only be continued if held peacefully without terror attacks launched by the TTP, otherwise force would be used. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Prime Minister’s Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) General Rashad Mahmood, Pakistan Air Force (PAF) chief Tahir Rafique Butt, Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Mohammad Asif Sandila, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Director General Lieutenant General Zaheerul Islam and Intelligence Bureau Director General Aftab Sultan were present at the meeting.What a pathetic response from the gallant custodians of this unfortunate country. If more than 60,000 people had not been butchered and many thousands maimed, these reports would have been farcical. There was already widespread scepticism about the chances for success of these so-called talks, given the Taliban’s outlandish demands. Even the most vociferous analysts of the elite never took these talks seriously, although in their line of duty they continued to indulge in raucous, meaningless and never-ending debates on the electronic media. Meanwhile, this semi-religious right wing regime of the PML-N and corporate media granted free airtime to the most bigoted and reactionary clerics to vent their venal and hate mongering sermons to further plunge society into the morass of reaction, fear and despair. During the 40-day ‘truce’ there was hardly any respite in terrorist acts and after the expiry of this façade of a ceasefire these incursions will not abate. The whole exercise of talks was a deception and deceit on the part of the squabbling and obtuse strategists of the state. The Taliban at least got some of their terrorists out while they conceded nothing to the regime. Are the Taliban better negotiators or were the government negotiators in complicity with their ideological cohorts? The demand to release prominent children of famed politicians kidnapped by the Taliban was not even mentioned by the regime’s team in these negotiations. After all, this ransom income is their source of bread and butter. Financial issues were not on the agenda. The irony is that this whole conflict of terror and counter-terror is all about financial matters. Ideology and religion are hardly the real issue behind this fallout between these former allies and cronies in the dollar jihad against communism. The mentors and their renegade Frankenstein monsters were the product of the biggest covert operation ever launched by the CIA to defeat Afghanistan’s Saur Revolution of April 1978, which was a blow for landlordism, medieval tribal despotism, oppression of women, capitalist relations and the stranglehold of imperialism. However, after the imperialists left with the fall of the USSR, these forces of dark reaction continued to develop the financial resources of heroin manufacture and smuggling, ransom, extortion and other criminal methods of amassing black capital. Where there is ill-gotten wealth, there is the inevitability of bloody fallout of the different vying factions of these primitive bandits. The various proxies of the state in this war of attrition for a greater share of the booty dragged the patronising factions of the state into these conflicts. The imperialist aggression and occupation of Afghanistan and their deep intrusions into Pakistan through the mercenary Blackwater, DynCorp and other corporate war and espionage contractors, further convoluted and aggravated this conflict. The corruption and debilitated condition of Pakistan’s bourgeois political elite made its so-called democratic regimes subservient and accomplices to the state and its agencies, which controlled the foreign and internal security policies. Hence these ‘Taliban’ are a misnomer for these different criminal gangs, proxies of vying regional and western imperialist powers, simultaneously at war with the US, the Indians, the Pakistani state and in internecine bloody feuds amongst themselves. To pose such diverse groups as a single entity and confer respectability through bilateral talks is scandalous. The rhetoric of talks and military operation against such a widespread and conflict-ridden spectrum of criminal mafias is deceptive and treacherous. However, this is creating fissures within the armed forces. The military high command is facing enormous resentment and outrage from the young officers and the ranks that are fighting this war where nobody really knows who the real enemy is and where. Loyalties change in no time. Proxies split and the splinter groups are more vicious and become dreadful in their brutality to enhance their fear of terror, essential to boost their earnings from criminal businesses, extortions and ransom. The moneyed political elite are growing hoarse with the nauseating cliché of ‘protection of democracy’. Although there was some grumbling by the military elite on certain statements, the threat of an imminent coup is too farfetched. The Zardari and Sharif photo session only reinforces the political elite’s contempt for the suffering masses as their panacea of democracy has exacerbated misery, poverty and deprivation. These obsolete, repulsive and hated clichés and leaders have become repugnant to the masses. Alterations between military and civilian regimes have only deepened the crisis of this system and its state, which are now in the throes of terminal decay. Without its transformation nothing can really change for the better. Society will deteriorate even more. How can there be any peace, tranquillity and prosperity in a system socially tattered, economically cataclysmic and historically doomed? The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at ptudc@hotmail.com