Daily Times

Forget for a moment well-rehearsed arguments about aid from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, rape and suicide cases in Punjab and Sindh, US withdrawal and coming general elections in India and Afghanistan. The negotiations with the Taliban need a wider focus. The Taliban leadership believes middle ground can be found, unless Pakistan rejects their demands and changes that calculus, in which case they are doomed to failure.. After an initial glimmer of optimism, a more familiar gloom descended before the army made the Taliban realise that it was time to consider different strategies. Few hold out great hopes for the negotiation meetings agreed as a result.

What is surprising perhaps is that anyone should be surprised by the uncertainty about the leaders of the Taliban. For all the diplomatic ingenuity invested, the big question has gone unaddressed: who is responsible when we are talking to the Taliban and who will stand accountable for signing on the dotted line and abandoning violence and terrorism in Pakistan? Put these two perspectives together and they carry an inexorable logic. For diplomacy to succeed, talks must be sufficiently open and enduring to persuade the Taliban that they are safer without a bomb, and to assure the nation and international community that the Taliban are not just playing for time. A meeting focused narrowly on the nuts and bolts of a negotiation deal will not defuse years of hostility and mistrust between the two but it may be the first step towards building a safety net. What the Taliban want from such a bargain should be clear enough. A glimpse of what they want put on the table can be found in their charter of demands, starting with their being allowed to move unobstructed without national or international surveillance of their activities; army withdrawal from South Waziristan; release of detainees held by the army in return for non-combatants held by the Taliban and a meeting with the army chief and the Director General Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). These demands reach far beyond what the Pakistan government — and, for that matter, the army or ISI — would, or should, be prepared to concede. But it is the nature of things that negotiations start with setting out maximalist positions. It is also a fact that, with or without negotiations, the army will remain the main actor in writing the concluding page of this peace deal. Could the generals bring themselves to shake hands with a terrorist knowing he had killed people? It is one of the most basic human gestures, but one that is loaded with analytic symbolism. It is entirely natural that those who have lost loved ones in terrorist atrocities, or been maimed themselves, should think it wrong that we ever speak to the Taliban. It is all too likely this historical pattern will be repeated again, even if at the moment it seems it could lead to a landmark peace deal. But who would have thought that one day we might find ourselves sitting down and negotiating in the same room as them. There is time for a serious negotiation — as long as the Taliban have the unity among their shura council to say yes to the deal on the table. The best intelligence says the Taliban have not restarted terrorist activities since announcing a truce, and are still adhering to their word. To attack the Taliban without knowing what they want or intend would make Mr Sharif’s wars in Waziristan seem like a model of ill-conceived statecraft. The rules may have changed, but does dancing with the wolves work?

Often, politicians advocate dialogue simply because other strategies are unattractive. Pakistanis are exhausted, but just because military and economic strategies have costs does not necessarily make dialogue the answer. The talks, however, will also test Prime Minister Sharif’s idea of keeping an ‘open door’ to negotiating with even the most repressive, violent groups. The Taliban have shown a few signs that they may have altered their ways. They claim to be committed to a peaceful end to terrorism and they agreed that they would stop terrorist activities, although that falls short of promises that they can hold without abrogating their cutting demands. In addition, the Taliban also face a very different Afghanistan. Yet despite all this, much doubt remains that the Taliban will give up their arms and operate as a non-militant group given their current ideology — especially the part that requires implementation of sharia in the country. Without that concession, Pakistan will find it difficult to withdraw its military presence from the tribal areas even if the Taliban plan to end militancy. As some observers have noted, the establishment of an Islamic state based on sharia in Pakistan has been the cornerstone of the Taliban’s political goals since the movement began in the 1990s. The hypothesis that the Taliban would engage in direct negotiations with Pakistan for a peaceful post-negotiation package, has never been validated. At this point, everybody is still groping in the dark, and the Taliban are revealed to be astute politicians, since they accepted negotiating with the government without giving any guarantee that they would agree to the same view. This is a picture much closer today, when sharia courts were established by the Shabab movement in Somalia and the Taliban in Swat. The Taliban may also want to provide law and order through sharia, thus capitalising on the shortcomings of the current formal judicial system in Pakistan. The idea that they may attempt to expand courts to contest government control and habituate their authority over the local populace, while making everybody believe they are negotiating for a fair deal, is a strong hypothesis. Another hypothesis is that no deal will be possible from the first round of talks. That the unstated desire of each party to impress and force the other to give in would lead to more warfare until exhaustion compels them again to negotiate. Nonetheless, it is still legitimate to hope, at least because both sides realise that such a struggle would be very hard to win on the battlefield.

Appeasement is placating or pacifying an opponent by acceding to his demands. As a diplomatic strategy, however, appeasement succeeds only when both parties to a dispute have limited aims, demands that can be satisfied short of virtual surrender by one of the negotiators. However, there is more to handle here than just exchanging prisoners and the exodus of military forces from the region. For example: will the Taliban condemn and renounce violence? What would they get in return? Forced migration to Afghanistan? What if they don’t want it? What if they prefer continuing with armed struggle after withdrawal of military and paramilitary troops? So when do you think that times will change? If it is not yet accepted as simple fact, then is it any longer a marginal proposition that some kind of negotiated resolution with the Taliban will be necessary, since 50,000 innocent people have already been killed, terror reigns in suburbs and the capital, cross-border tension is simmering, and US coalition forces search for an exit strategy? Even if a resolution of some kind proves possible, the thought that negotiating may help with an enemy that many consider dangerous is something that sticks in the craw.

The writer is a member of the Diplomate American Board of Medical Psychotherapists Dip.Soc Studies, member Int’l Association of Forensic Criminologists, associate professor Psychiatry and consultant Forensic Psychiatrist at the Huntercombe Group United Kingdom. He can be reached at fawad_shifa@yahoo.com