Islamabad reshapes its foreign policy and security outlook
The ghostly echoes of war drums in troubled Waziristan have already begun to resonate across Pakistan.
Showing posts with label Pakistan Government-TTP peace talks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pakistan Government-TTP peace talks. Show all posts
It may have taken a few rounds of surgical assaults on part of the state security apparatus to get Taliban feel the heat, but it is probably too late for the terrorist outfit to mend faces and make up with the state after more than enough of the innocent blood has been spilled.
A subtle air of mistrust and disorientation characterises Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) freshly discovered penchant for peace (only for thirty days). Pakistan’s strategic gurus, be they security officials, defence experts or the civilian government functionaries, all look aptly justified to see through this entire affair from the spectacles of scepticism.
As the orthodox lot of ‘Taliban lovers’ jumps into motion to shower endless praises on the TTP’s newly revived love for dialogue, the public, security establishment, politicians, civil society, journalists and the different cross-sections of Pakistani society in general are not ready to buy this, especially at a time when surgical missions in the north-western tribal areas have had more than 140 terrorists including some top TTP commanders eliminated from the face of the earth.
“They talk sense only when they are made to face the music,” said Lieutenant General (Retd) Abdul Qadir Baloch in an obvious reference to the TTP’s ceasefire announcement for 30 days. “This clearly indicates we have taught them a real good lesson.”
Baloch, an incumbent federal minister, did not seem much moved. “They talked like that in the past and they were the ones to have breached the peace agreements and resorted to violence. We really have to look if this is yet another eyewash only to buy time for regrouping or they really mean business,” the former general referred to the peace dialogues initiated in the past all of which died an ultimately obvious death.
“Even just recently, the Taliban were the ones who offered peace talks and they were the ones who spilled our innocent blood. Our brave security men and civilians were so ruthlessly targeted in dozens of attacks. So, if this is just another time-buying tactic only to regroup to unleash more havoc, we are not going to buy it and the TTP will have to pay for it the hard way.”
The TTP’s offer, the minister said, would be taken up for discussion by the prime minister and the cabinet members. “We will see if the TTP is serious enough to mend its ways or they’re just playing games. Our future policy line would be determined after we exchange notes,” he told this correspondent.
Dr Hassan Askari Rizvi did not think differently. “Taliban cannot be trusted,” he said while describing this fresh offer from the notorious terrorist outfit as a gimmick for saving its skin. “More than 14 peace agreements were struck in the past and see what was the result. We cannot and must not act in such a naïve and gullible way so as to trust these terrorists again and again.”
Wishing to stay unnamed for obvious reasons, a security Czar, in a meeting with this correspondent in the recent past, did not mince words to term the TTP and its allied militant groups as “mercenaries who have lust for blood.”
The official, a highly placed one, could see it coming what the TTP had to offer on Saturday. “Their chain of command is broken. Now they’ll talk about peace. They’ll talk about the country and Islam and there would be certain elements that would stand up to support this demand. Such kind of melodramas creates discontent within the rank and file of the military.”
The security official believed it is not about weeks or months, but a matter of a few days to wipe out the militants from the planet. “It’s all about will. The political will. The security forces are ready to make the terrorists pay through the nose, the way we have had, recently. It’s the politicians who always back off.”
Lieutenant General (Retd) Talat Masood shared his views in a similar vein. “The Pakistani nation should not be made to suffer for the misdeeds of the militants. The TTP does not call the shots anymore. The security forces have neutralised the militants in several parts. After achieving a high level of success, the option to reverse the ongoing action would have adverse consequences. The public, political parties and the security establishment are all on same page to take on terrorism. The government should honour the wishes of the people.”
The Nation
As always at the brink of a new offensive, the threat of reprisal attacks also looms large this time around. But the difference at this point is that the government seems to be prepared to face the repercussions. Last week it announced a counter-terrorism policy that will entail the formation of a rapid response force among other intelligence supported measures to deter and respond to terror attacks.
As of now the government’s categorical denial that the current spate of airstrikes against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the tribal areas, specifically North and South Waziristan, are not preliminary measures before the launch of a ground offensive has not ended speculation.
The perception is that these intelligence driven precision strikes targeting militant strongholds are an integral part of the groundwork before the start of the operation — this was the same operational strategy used in other parts of Federally Administered Tribal Areas during previous operations.
Security sources Gulf News spoke to in this context have also backed Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ahmad Khan’s statement. The source told Gulf News, “These airstrikes cannot be called preliminary or a prelude to the military operation. These are just targeted strikes based on intelligence. The Interior Minister has also said that we will target those who attack the state, every attack of the terrorists will be met with a strong response. This is in line with the government policy and it has nothing to do with the offensive being discussed.”
But what is also true is that weakening the Taliban by targeting key commanders and their headquarters will help once the operation starts. An operation targeting North Waziristan, however, will not be a small scale one and will require large scale movement of forces and logistical preparations. But given the army’s presence in neighbouring settled areas and South Waziristan it may be a smoother process than earlier anti-militant offensives.
Fearing the impact of the impending operation, thousands of people have already left North Waziristan. The United Nations has said that they are ready to help the internally displaced persons (IDP) from the agency — at the time of writing the IDP’s were over 20,000, mostly women and children. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has also begun preparations for hosting the North Waziristan IDPs.
Meanwhile, government officials continue to advocate dialogue to end the standoff. It may seem contradictory, but given the TTP’s reneging on an agreement that it will refrain from any attack during talks, there was little choice but to respond.
More significant is the shift that has come about in the government’s policy for dealing with the TTP threat — the decision to meet any terrorist attack in the country with a responsive attack on their strongholds.
If this does not convince the militants that the dynamics have changed then little else will. The question is if Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is willing to take this to the end and not succumb to political pressure from some parties and religious blocs that oppose such offensives.
What Sharif has inherited is a vastly different environment to when he was prime minister in his past two tenures. His objective to turn the economy around is being hindered by the security threat the Taliban and other indigenous militants pose.
But the trick is to maintain a balance between keeping open the communication channels and applying enough pressure, something Sharif’s government will now have to manage.
A Rs3.2 billion (Dh112 million) fund for the implementation of the security policy besides empowering the National Counter-terrorism Authority to coordinate operations within security, intelligence bodies and the federal and provincial governments are part of resurgent approach to dealing with the issue.
As for when the operation for North Waziristan may be launched, the military has already stated that it is ready to do so anytime the government decides.
The security source commenting on the recent statement by the Air Force Chief, which led to a perception that the ongoing airstrikes in the tribal areas were a prelude to the operation said, “The army has always maintained a readiness to face any challenge. The armed forces are always ready. So the statement by the Air Force Chief cannot be taken to mean that he is giving any hints of an operation. The launch of the military offensive in North Waziristan is something the government has to decide.”
One crucial factor Pakistan must forcefully take up with Afghanistan at this juncture is the issue of the cross border movement of the TTP militants in the course of the operation.
TTP Chief Mullah Fazlullah is said to be in Afghanistan and any operation will naturally induce further cross border movement and support from the Afghan militants as well as the TTP militants currently stationed there.
It is imperative that Kabul also extend Islamabad the same support it has been getting from the Pakistan military at the times of key operations in its southern and eastern border areas.
More importantly, now that a North Waziristan operation seems imminent, it is vital that both Kabul and Washington extend full support to Pakistan, for this is the very area, declared by both as the key to the Afghan insurgency hosting “safe havens” for Afghan insurgents as well.
Gulf News
Pakistan on Sunday said it was halting air strikes against Taliban militants in response to a month-long ceasefire announced by the insurgents a day earlier, paving the way for the resumption of peace talks.
The government entered into peace talks with the Taliban last month aimed at ending the militants' seven-year insurgency, but the dialogue broke down after militants killed 23 kidnapped soldiers.
The military responded with a series of air strikes in the volatile northwestern tribal areas that left more than 100 insurgents dead, and on Saturday the Taliban announced a month-long ceasefire aimed at resuming the stalled talks.
“After the positive announcement yesterday by the Taliban, the government has decided to suspend the air strikes which were continuing for the past few days,” Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said in a statement Sunday.
The statement added that “the government and armed forces of Pakistan, however, reserve the right for a befitting response to any act of violence (by the Taliban).”
The Taliban's ceasefire announcement on Saturday was met with scepticism by analysts who said it may have been a tactic to allow the militants to regroup after they had taken heavy losses in air strikes.
But Khan said the “government considers the announcement of stopping of violent activities by Taliban a positive development.”
He added that since the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took charge in June last year, Islamabad had not taken “any unjustified action” against the militants, choosing only to react to violence rather than initiating any new military operations.
Rahimullah Yusufzai, a member of the government's negotiation team, told AFP: “I think that the possibility of resumption of peace talks has now increased. A ceasefire was the demand of the government and the negotiations committee.
“But the ceasefire should be effective. If attacks continue then the conducive environment we are searching for won't materialise.”
Balancing act
Reacting to the minister's announcement, political analyst Raza Rumi told AFP that the government was attempting to play a balancing act and had to match the Taliban's ceasefire “to ensure right wing public opinion does not turn against them.”
“I think one issue is the government wants to appear as a peace loving political entity. But deep down there is a desire by both parties to buy more time given the way the situation is unfolding in Afghanistan.”
“They want to wait for what happens,” he said, referring to the withdrawal of Nato troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and its regional impact.
Security analyst Talat Masood, a retired general, said the ceasefire had come about because the military's air strikes had forced the Taliban back to the negotiation table, and that the government should be careful not to lose its advantage.
“One of the inherent dangers of a ceasefire is that it allows militants to regroup or reorganise. We will have to increase our intelligence to closely monitor if militants are regrouping or escaping during the ceasefire,” he said.
He added that militant groups which are not in favour of talks may try to disrupt the ceasefire.
Eleven paramilitary soldiers and one child died while 11 other people were wounded when three roadside bombs targeting a polio vaccination team in the lawless Khyber district exploded Saturday, in an attack carried out by the little-known Abdullah Izam Brigade, according to an official.
The Pakistani military earlier on Sunday deployed a helicopter gunship to kill five militants it blamed for the attack, a senior security official told AFP.
DAWN
Rustam Shah Mohmand on Sunday said foreign terrorists hiding in tribal areas have three options: surrender, leave the area or live in peace.
Talking to reporters, the government committee member said the government needed to assimilate foreign terrorists in the mainstream who could not go back to their countries.
Prayers were answered as Pakistan won cricket match against archrival India in Dhaka’s Sher-e-Bungla stadium. Earlier, Mohmand had urged the Taliban to pray for Pakistan’s victory in the Asia Cup against India.
The government interlocutor said that the Taliban have declared a ceasefire on the government’s demand. He said that the government committee members would be meeting in a day or two to review the situation.
He said that following the ceasefire, an environment of trust would be created and swapping of prisoners would further strengthen the confidence in each other. He said that the government should demand extension in the period of Taliban ceasefire.
Mohmand said that the resolution of issues would take time.
Pakistan Today
The Government-TTP peace talks have seemingly been dealt a death-blow with the murder of 27 kidnapped FC soldiers. Was the talks process a sham – an excuse to launch a “legitimate, publicly supported” military operation – or was it an honest effort on part of both sides to achieve peace without shedding more blood? And are the people of Pakistan ready for the war that is to come…?
While the peace talks initiative between the government and the TTP seemed to progressing at its own pace and in its own unique (and somewhat inexplicable, incomprehensible) direction, the TTP kept on clamoring about continuing military operations against its cadres – the TTP’s central spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said that in order for the peace talks to continue successfully and without obstruction, the military should desist from engaging and/or killing TTP militants. In the meantime, since the government’s peace initiative efforts had started – that is, for the last five or so months – more than 100 soldiers have died in terror attacks perpetrated by the Taliban: the exact toll stands at 114 military personnel, 308 civilians and 38 police officers. These people were killed by the Taliban, but the nation remains unaware of these martyrs of Pakistan (and of the government’s peace efforts). At the same time, the TTP demanded that the government release prisoners that were held by the military: it remains disputed whether the TTP wanted women and children to be released, or militants who had been captured before or after they had undertaken terrorist actions against the state. The Pakistan government said it may release women and children “non-combatant” prisoners, but not as a precondition of the TTP’s declaration of ceasefire.
Even before the talks started, and especially after the media reported that actual talks – the negotiations process and the exchange of demands between the government and the TTP – were on, there were many questions that were being asked and which, to a large extent, remained unanswered. Do all segments of society support the peace initiative? Could the political parties like ANP, PPP and MQM be brought on board the talks process – parties and political entities who have been specifically and particularly targeted by the TTP in the past? Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has started giving vocal, intense speeches against the Taliban and has vowed to fight them and defeat them by any means necessary in order to pay homage and tribute to thousands of both the soldiers and the civilians who have died at the hands of terrorist attacks, while MQM chief Altaf Hussain has also been giving speeches against rising extremism, the Talibanization of Karachi, and against giving in to the TTP demands without extracting definitive security gains from the terrorist group – even though he may be facing some legal troubles of his own in the UK.
And what if – despite, or as a result of, the talks – war happens? Would the TTP initiate the aggression – or merely ramp up its targeting of the military and law enforcement agencies, operatives and institutions throughout the country, or would the government launch a military invasion of the tribal areas and beef up security in cities and urban centers – and is the government capable enough of developing an adequate defensive security plan for the general public, given the entrenchment of TTP and Al Qaeda cells/operatives in Pakistan? What about the implementation of Shariah/Shariat law (many Pakistanis still are confused as to which is the real world for the Islamic system of laws and punishments) that serves as the main TTP demand to the government and state: will the government start implementing it, or – like Fazlullah’s usurpation of power in Swat – will the militants enforce a distorted version of strict Islamic law in populated areas? Will the elite classes in Pakistan support peace with the TTP, or the implementation of Shariah/Shariat law – and are they even appreciating the government’s approach to peace and permanent respite from the threat of Islamic fundamentalist terror?
Will political forces and segments of society – especially those referred to above – support the government if it gives in (i.e. surrenders) to many if not all TTP demands just for the sake of peace? And what kind of peace will follow if the government recognizes the TTP as an entity with equivalent authority (when in fact it is still a proscribed organization) and implements the demands that the religious fundamentalist militant umbrella organization’s chief shura has made of Pakistan’s rulers? What will be the exact terms of a peace with the TTP, and who will set them – more importantly, if the terms are broken – as has happened almost every time in the past, no matter who the culprit was and who was blamed – will there be punishments? Will such punishments be meted out collective (to groups) or to individuals – what will be the jurisdiction of responsibilities that both parties of the would-be peace accord would have to adhere to and enforce? Will peace with the TTP be durable: given all past experiences, can the TTP (its leadership, its subordinate groups, even its cadres) be trusted at all?!
Will there be peace… or all-out war?
In any case, Sunday’s revelation by TTP’s Mohmand chapter ameer, Umar Khalid Khurasani, that the TTP had executed 23 FC soldiers it had kidnapped from the Shongari checkpost in 2010 – they had abducted a total of 35 soldiers in that raid – came as a shockwave that took its own time to register a varied magnitude of impact on the country’s leadership, the government, the military top brass, and the general public. Khurasani claimed that the execution came as a “response to the extrajudicial killings of militants in recent weeks”. It had been reportedly made clear to the TTP that the suicide bombing in Karachi on Feruary 14 – which claimed the lives of 13 police commandoes and injured at least 50 others as they exited from their training camp (the Razzakabad Police Training Center on the outskirts of Karachi city) and were headed to the SSU (Special Security Unit) HQ for duty assignment – had already weakened the position of (and increased pressure on the federal government, particularly) the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mian Nawaz Sharif, in terms of his staunch (and at times, unequivocal and solitary) support for and promotion of the dialogue process with the TTP. While in Ankara, PM Sharif was under the impression – and was perhaps even told by TTP negotiators – that action will be taken against those elements of the TTP who had conducted terror attacks in recent days (i.e. during the talks).
If the sophisticated and deadly Karachi IED attack – which the TTP took responsibility for as a “reprisal attack”, and one wonders why they did so when they are engaged in peace talks with the government and especially when they did not claim responsibility for the attack on a Peshawar cinema – made the PM’s position precarious and unpopular, the recent announcement of the murder of Frontier Corps soldiers who had been kidnapped for over 2 years, and whose family members had been gripped by fear and anger for all that time, has (seemingly and apparently) hammered the final nail in the coffin of the Government-TTP peace talks process. On Tuesday, February 18, the English daily “The Nation” ran the headline “TTP kills talks, govt resurrects op”, and also reported that the bodies of soldiers who had been “savaged” by the Taliban had been found.
Even though the TTP have won the propaganda war – thanks to their threat of force and violence, and also courtesy to the biasedness of the so-called “fair, free, balanced”, etc. etc. electronic media of Pakistan in general (except for the more-than-two-dozen brave Pakistani journalists who have given the ultimate sacrifice while reporting from the most dangerous areas of Pakistan) – but the battle for the hearts and minds of the Pakistani people, as well as the battle for the streets of Pakistan (the actual battle for control of the country, which is undoubtedly going to be bloodier than any war or calamity Pakistan has thus witnessed) are two essential and unfortunately inevitable conflicts that have yet to be fought. One wonders whether Pakistan’s previous or incumbent civilian government was ever in a position to win the hearts and minds of the general public – the very electorate that voted them into power but (again, in large part, due to the media) blames the powers-that-be for all the ills and woes that befall the common Pakistani man, woman and child.
It needs to be noted that the execution of these troops may not have occurred recently (i.e. during the peace talks, or after formal peace negotiations started between the government committees and the TTP-nominated committees) and the TTP have also not confirmed the identities of those soldiers whom they have killed in captivity. But the announcement of the murder/execution being made during the initial, birthing stages of the peace talks (when the ground was being set and the negotiationg table was just being polished), and that too by a senior TTP leader nonetheless, is a stark reminder of two very important things regarding militancy and terrorism in Pakistan: one, that the TTP is an umbrella organization that – unlike the state and its law enforcement agencies, and even unlike the Afghan Taliban – does not have a strict chain of command and control, where orders of authority are obeyed and disobedience is punishable; and two, that the TTP – or any terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda – has never been sincere in peace talks with Pakistan (since 2004 – or with any other state or government entity for that matter) since a ceasefire by state military forces is a much-desired “breathing space” time for the militants, who get the opportunity to gather, regroup, recruit, and reinforce their cadres, numbers, areas of influence, weapons caches, networks of operatives, supply lines and lines of financial inflows, and many other essentials that are required to keep an anti-state national insurgency operational and running.
The announcement of the murder of the FC soldiers – coming only a few days after the deadly blast in Karachi that ears the same signature of attacks that targeted Navy buses, Rangers vehicles and cost the life of Karachi CID SP Chaudhry Aslam (a 25kg unidirectional bomb activated by a remote controlled detonator) – was either designed to keep the TTP in a position of tactical if not strategic superiority against the Pakistani state which had been tolerating (and kept on bearing) terror attacks since 2007, or it was a deliberate attempt to push the government back from its resolve for a peaceful way out of the ongoing Islamic fundamentalist insurgency that has significant linkages to the decades-long civil war and Western troop intervention in neighbouring Afghanistan. It would be analytically inappropriate, even foolish, to consider and analyze the Pakistani peace process in isolation from the Afghan Taliban insurgency (which has been gaining the momentum against international troops from over 30 countries, including the U.S. and NATO, since their resurgence in 2006), the imminent withdrawal of foreign troops from an unstable and still war-torn Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the prospects of deadly interruptions in the Afghan electoral process in April 2014 (when Afghans go to the polls to elect their parliamentarians as well as their new President), the strategic designs and regional economic goals and/or targets of Russia, China and India – it is, after all, a theater of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) if not the New Great Game.
Detractors of the Pakistani military – even at home – quip about how the Pakistan Armed Forces do not have enough fuel reserves or supplies to engage in a conflict for longer than a few weeks, let alone months: these people forget that Pakistan has been engaged in fighting a low-to-medium intensity separatist insurgency in Balochistan as well as a nationwide terrrorist threat posed by militants who control parts of the western tribal areas/agencies of the country, and that the conflict has been raging on at various levels of intensity for over a decade (fighting the militants since 2003-04, and the latest – the fifth since Pakistan’s independence – Baluch insurgency since the death of Nawab Akbar Bugti in August 2007???). Many believe that Pakistan needs continued military and financial assistance from the U.S. – especially the Coalition Support Funds or CSF for fighting the War on Terror – in order to sustain military operations against the TTP and Taliban-allied militants, and even to defeat this deadly existential threat that Pakistan has been facing ever since the U.S. launched their Global War on Terror (GWOT) in 2001.
The time has now come to test the mettle of Pakistan’s Armed Forces – and all of its paramilitary organizations and law enforcement agencies, for that matter – as well as the strength, resolve and unity of the Pakistani people in terms of fighting back against – and eventually defeating – the menace of religious fundamentalism, militant terrorism and extremism/intolerance that have pervaded Pakistani society since the 1970s and have become embedded and entrenched in all nooks and crannies of the Pakistani nation-state. This existential threat cannot be removed by merely defeating the TTP, or making them operationally ineffective: the people of Pakistan – in addition to supporting the military unflinchingly – must also fight against extremism and intolerance in society if the war is to be won, and if a lasting peace for this and future generations is to be achieved.
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