Daily Times

Back in April 2009, this commentator had this to say in these pages: “A convoy of vehicles, full of Taliban fighters openly sporting heavy weaponry, drove down from the Buner valley all the way through the Swabi district…Swabi district abuts the Tarbela Dam on the east (yes, the Tarbela Dam!) and comes down to the M-1 Motorway at Jahangira…This deadly convoy moved on to the district of Mardan…and then drove into the city of Mardan itself…A very few miles to the west is Charsadda…Immediately to the south is the PAF Training academy at Risalpur. These are the kinds of heavily populated, and presumably well patrolled, areas through which the armed convoy drove — no isolated, mountainous badlands these — before heading north to Malakand and on to Swat.

Their particular mission is not clear, but the point is they were not challenged or queried at any point in their long drive. Neither Army, nor Rangers, nor Police…had the temerity to ask these fearsome looking, heavily armed gents to pause and explain their intended business…as in Somalia, where bands of armed yahoos run rampant over the landscape.

In the aftermath of the Swat debacle, the screams of someone’s brutalised daughter are still echoing from our media. The thousands of other screams of Shias torn to pieces and myriads of Pakistani citizens flogged, tortured, flayed, beheaded and shot, still remain unheard. How dare they speak of ‘sovereignty’!”

This was written shortly after a ‘peace deal’ had been made following negotiations with the militants, a deal which at that time of writing had already begun to fall apart. To the sweet-young-things who trill, “We should at least give talks a try!” and to the TV anchors who thunder, “We must talk to the militants!” let me say: listen, we’ve been there, done that. Many times. Since the very emergence of the Pakistani Taliban, there have been continual talks and repeated peace deals. These merely resulted in the further strengthening of the Pakistani Taliban, violence flaring soon after the agreements became effective.

Let me mention just a few of these.

In April 2004, as terror squads murdered our citizens and insurgency devoured Pakistan’s sovereign territory and killed our soldiers, talks were held and an agreement made with Nek Muhammad Wazir, a major Taliban commander in South Waziristan. Immediately after the signing of the Shakai agreement, Nek Mohammed renounced its terms, recommenced hostilities against Pakistani forces and systematically murdered the tribal elders who had helped negotiate the agreement. It took a US drone strike to halt his career of butchery and waging war against Pakistan.

In February 2005, the Pakistani government reached a peace agreement with Baitullah Mehsud of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the Srarogha area of South Waziristan. However, in the months following this agreement, attacks by the Taliban militants in South Waziristan, in fact, dramatically increased. The peace deal had served no purpose other than to prolong and spread militancy. Mehsud’s numerous terror strikes beyond FATA included the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. He was eventually killed by a US drone strike in August 2009. Yet the organisation he founded remains strong and is now led by Hakimullah Mehsud.

In the Swat Valley, trouble had begun as far back as 1994, when Maulana Sufi Mohammad sought to enforce what he considered the Shari’a (vehicles must drive on the right, girls cannot go to school, women must wear burqa, and throats of those who disagree should be slit). But he was driven out by the Swatis themselves. However, the MMA government that came to power in 2002 adopted a softer posture. Sufi Mohammed’s son-in-law Fazlullah, who used an illegal FM radio station to propagate his primitive views, established a parallel government near Matta in the lower valley. Notorious for its throat-slittings and other violence against the citizens, Fazlullah’s regime sought to expand the area under its control, reducing this beautiful valley to a war zone. In 2008, the newly elected ANP-PPP government in KPK hastily extended an offer of peace talks.

Following a series of meetings, the two sides reached a 16-point agreement to bring an end to violence and restore peace to the valley. Within five days of inking the peace deal, the Taliban refused to surrender their arms, as was stipulated in the agreement. Within a month, militants began attacking government officials and installations, as well as destroying electronics shops and schools, kidnapping and beheading civilians and attacking police and army convoys. Outside Swat, the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad was bombed.

Yet another agreement was negotiated in February 2009. This one lasted a month before it was violated and Swat suffered another spasm of extreme violence. The Fazlullah-led Taliban overran Mingora, the commercial centre of the Swat Valley, and then pushed into neighbouring Buner and Shangla districts and began to threaten Swabi and Mardan and Islamabad itself. In Rawalpindi, the GHQ was subjected to a terror attack.

The Taliban advance caused Pakistan to launch Operations Black Thunderstorm in Buner and Rah-e-Rast in Swat. Within two months of these major military operations, Fazlullah had fled and most of his commanders were either arrested or killed.

Apart from these major peace agreements (Shakai, Srarogha and Swat), there were also many unwritten peace deals. For example, in September 2006, Pakistan recognised the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan, an association of chieftains led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazir, as the de facto force controlling North Waziristan. A similar deal was reached with militant commander Faqir Muhammad in Bajaur in August 2008. Various understandings were reached with Mangal Bagh in Khyber Agency. All these agreements were quickly violated.

The sad fact is that all these failed agreements had the effect of enhancing the prestige of militant leaders. By levelling demands on the government and then entering into negotiations, the Taliban demonstrated to civilians that militant leaders are strong enough to sit at the same table as the country’s top military officials. This solidified support for the Taliban among the populations under their draconian rule.

What needs to be understood by our sweet-young-things, our TV anchors, and especially the political leaders now assuming responsibility for the nation’s sovereignty and security, is that quelling an insurrection of this magnitude is a long, slow process, requiring unwavering determination and enormous stamina, perhaps over several decades. Yes, talks are certainly a part of the process, but only after the enemy has been militarily broken and is, therefore, forced to come to the table. Are you listening, Mr Nawaz Sharif? Mr Imran Khan?

The writer is a marketing consultant based in Karachi. He is also a poet