Daily Times

Full marks to Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto for his position that if talks with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan must take place, people’s representatives in parliament should be in control of the entire exercise. Let’s not forget that much of the nation was left stunned by former prime minister Imran Khan’s revelation, during an interview with a Turkish TV channel a year or so ago, that the military was negotiating a ceasefire with the TTP at the request of the Afghan Taliban.

The understanding till then, for all intents and purposes, was that Islamabad would help the Taliban return to Kabul by arranging peace talks with the Americans and, in return, the new Afghan government would sort out TTP inside Afghanistan’s borders.

But for some reason, once the Taliban were securely back in the capital, they thought it would be better for Pakistan to talk it out with the TTP; refusing to take any action against them. Since then, there have also been skirmishes between Pakistani and Afghan security personnel at the border, which does not inspire much confidence about the type of arrangement that is in place–one, that has never been explained to the people, of course.

While it is understandable for security agencies to work out border issues, etc, between themselves, the TTP’s orgy of blood and bombs extended to the people of Pakistan as well, the darkest day of which was the murder of more than a hundred children in Peshawar in 2014, they must not be kept in the dark about the strategy about this particular enemy of the state.

It’s also a fair point that a vast majority of the country does not seem in favour of any sort of reconciliation with this bunch of barbaric murderers whatsoever, especially those that lost loved ones to their senseless violence. And now that there are reports that they are not only getting their special fighters released from government custody just to keep the negotiations going but also that they’re asking for a stretch of land somewhere in the tribal area to implement their own unique reading of Sharia law, people are understandably concerned.

Since Pakistan is still run on the principle of parliamentary, representative democracy, there is no question of such an important thing being run from anywhere other than parliament. *