Daily Times

While talks with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) seem to be an exercise in futility, they do highlight some very important facts about the organisation. The first is that the TTP are beyond reconciliation; they may even, in fact, be beyond the pale of recognisable humanity. The descent into wanton butchery for its own sake dehumanises the people who practice it, much as drug addicts or sexual predators lose their social values in the quest for satisfaction. Butchery and murder for the sake of power eventually turn these butchers into hostages of their actions, so even if the TTP were to come to power in some terrible alternate universe, the chances of their stopping the use of violence or killing are very low. Bloodlust might adequately describe the motivation of people who are in the habit of slitting throats, or shooting children at point blank range, or sending young men to blow themselves up in order to further ‘the cause’.

In this case, the cause, if it can even be described as such, is the imposition of a particular ideology they call sharia, though in fact it is nothing more than the pursuit of absolute power. We can say this because of their definition of sharia — sharia is what they say it is, when they say it is even if it was something different in the past. It is religious justification of absolute tyranny. Irrespective of any garbled claims of defending the faith, or ending corruption, or (heaven help us) restoring the constitution, the simple fact remains that the people who lead the TTP believe they should be in charge, absolutely, and that everyone must bend the knee or they will be forced to do so — they have no qualms using violence to achieve that end.

The TTP’s hunger for power is also discernible in the actions of sycophants and sell-outs who peddle their ideology in public. Of this ilk are certain journalists (who shall remain unnamed but have a reputation for sympathising with the TTP in their reporting for a major English language daily newspaper headquartered in Karachi though they themselves are stationed in Islamabad and have the first letter of the alphabet multiple times in their names, both first and sur) who, no doubt, saw the current negotiations as the final ascent of their ideological and mental masters, and were salivating at the prospect of lucrative and powerful positions in the new order the TTP aim to establish. This, of course, is the terrible failure of journalists who spend too much time close to powerful people; the desire to own power for themselves rather than act as a check on authority. Promises of gold were made and the convergence of men — I use the term very generously — such as these reveals the true nature of the TTP as the power seekers they are. These commentators have consistently tried to undermine the government’s resolve through articles and reports laden with half truths, filled with unsavoury opinions masquerading as reportage and manipulating semi-coherent statements to suit their purposes. One example was a recent report that intimated that the government was being wholly unreasonable in rejecting the perfectly ‘doable’ demands of the TTP, probably because of its ego. There does not yet exist a scale large enough to measure the mendacity such reportage requires.

However, the Taliban would never have been possible without the active participation of a prominent member of the TTP negotiating committee, Samiul Haq, who shares a name with our favourite dictator. Samiul Haq’s Taliban factory in Akora Khattak provided the personnel for the Taliban in the 1990s and it still functions today. Now, as we view his actions in his position on the TTP negotiating committee, it seems clear that while Samiul Haq may not be operationally linked to the TTP, he is in fact a man who reviles the state of Pakistan and its people, and desires a role as the grand patriarch in the Khomenei tradition in a TTP run Pakistan — a supreme leader who rarely interjects his opinions but can, nonetheless, be seen as a final arbiter of disputes.

Along with the PR face of the TTP, Abdul Aziz, he is by any definition, an enemy of the state, and his continued freedom represents a grave threat to the security and independence of the country. If the government is truly serious about bringing the TTP to justice for its crimes and eliminating them as a threat to the security of the state and people, then the first order of business is to arrest this man, whose presence in the public sphere is a slap in the country’s face. Arresting and detaining him would prove the government’s resolve, remove a major political crutch of the TTP and put an end to the intense speculation in international circles about Pakistan’s good intentions. The gravity of this imperative cannot be understated and the time to do so is now. Arrest Samiul Haq and Abdul Aziz, Nawaz Sharif, because we do not want to go through this cycle again. That is the beginning we need to end the terror once and for all.

P S — I have not added ‘Maulana’ before the names of the people mentioned above as I do not believe they deserve the epithet.

The writer is Assistant Editor at Daily Times