Sir: MQM leader Altaf Hussain demanded on August 12, 2013 that, as Pakistani security forces are unable to protect the general public from an ever increasing number of terrorist attacks, therefore just to avoid further bloodshed in the country, the government should be handed over to al Qaeda, Taliban and their cronies. For some this may be a sign of frustration but in fact Altaf Hussain has drawn the true picture of present day Pakistan. Today, we are in self-destruct mode, where one after the other religious/sectarian minorities are targeted, where the murderer of a Punjab governor is garlanded by lawyers, where we team up to oppose Malala Yousafzai’s efforts on girls education, where the doors of a fortified jail from colonial times are opened, allowing the Taliban to take away hundreds of their comrades to the safety of North Waziristan (around 200 km away from the broken jail), where those who dared to take action against terrorists holed up in Lal Masjid are implicated on the superior courts’ orders, where success in proxy wars in neighbouring countries is the only target (while ignoring their fallout back home), where the Taliban have not only established their writ in the tribal areas but are now knocking on Peshawar and Karachi’s gates. In Karachi, the security forces think twice before entering Manghopir locality, where heavily armed contingents of the Taliban are present.
Therefore, instead of fighting terror, let us take a short cut: not only should we negotiate with the Taliban to accommodate their designs/views on democracy, the judiciary, security and education systems but, as a step forward for permanent peace (generally found in graveyards), just hand over the governments in Islamabad and other provincial capitals to the Taliban. If not today, it is going to happen tomorrow — many forces are waiting for 2014’s US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Afterwards, we are going to witness the Taliban’s march from Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas into the whole region.
MASOOD KHAN
Jubail,
Saudi Arabia