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Can we really talk to the Taliban? -- Yasser Latif Hamdani
[Pak Daily Times] That you should never underestimate your enemy is common sense. Tragically, it seems in Pakistain common sense is in short supply. Our old hands, who continue to pontificate on strategies as if the world was a board game, are almost patronising in the way they talk about the Taliban. "They are our boys", "We have to win their hearts and minds", "Taliban were our allies", "We can still convince them", "We can bring them in the framework of our constitution", etc, are the kind of statements that we have heard for over a decade now. These statements are beginning to sound quite hollow.

Be realistic. The Taliban -- Afghan or Pak -- are not our boys. We face a determined foe, which is ideologically consistent, highly motivated and hell bent on overthrowing the state of Pakistain. Not once have the Taliban come to us for peace talks. It is always the Pak state that has attempted to negotiate, at the behest of those misguided souls who feel that the Taliban can still be brought under some sort of Pak banner. Others -- usually ex-khakis, who served under General Zia ul Haq
...the creepy-looking former dictator of Pakistain. Zia was an Islamic nutball who imposed his nutballery on the rest of the country with the enthusiastic assistance of the nation's religious parties, which are populated by other nutballs. He was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he hanged when he seized power. His time in office was a period of repression, with hundreds of thousands of political rivals, minorities, and journalists executed or tortured, including senior general officers convicted in coup-d'état plots, who would normally be above the law. As part of his alliance with the religious parties, his government helped run the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, providing safe havens, American equipiment, Saudi money, and Pak handlers to selected mujaheddin. Zia died along with several of his top generals and admirals and the then United States Ambassador to Pakistain Arnold Lewis Raphel when he was assassinated in a suspicious air crash near Bahawalpur in 1988...
 -- feel that the Taliban are hardened warriors who can be leashed and unleashed at will. Tragically, they fail to learn their lesson from the way Colonel Imam met his end. Mujib-ur-Rehman Shami, a noted journalist, feels that if the Taliban are given a chance, they would renounce violence and embrace a political -- and by extension a non-violent -- form. All of these people portray the Pak Taliban as a reactionary force that has emerged as a byproduct of the war on terror. A corollary of this argument is that if drone attacks stop, terrorism will wither away automatically.

This is a disastrous miscalculation. First of all, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) is a subsidiary of the Afghan Taliban. The presence of Mullah Fazlullah
...son-in-law of holy man Sufi Mohammad. Known as Mullah FM, Fazlullah had the habit of grabbing his FM mike when the mood struck him and bellowing forth sermons. Sufi suckered the Pak govt into imposing Shariah on the Swat Valley and then stepped aside whilst Fazlullah and his Talibs imposed a reign of terror on the populace like they hadn't seen before, at least not for a thousand years or so. For some reason the Pak intel services were never able to locate his transmitter, much less bomb it. After ruling the place like a conquered province for a year or so, Fazlullah's Talibs began gobbling up more territory as they pushed toward Islamabad, at which point as a matter of self-preservation the Mighty Pak Army threw them out and chased them into Afghanistan...
 in Afghanistan, and the fact that Latif Mehsud was captured from there, are all indications of that. The Taliban in Afghanistan are not merely fighting the Americans and the NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and organization....
 forces. Their stated objective has been constant since they first emerged as a force in the mid-1990s, i.e. the establishment of an Islamic Emirate. This would be a universal Islamic Emirate not concerned with borders, hell bent on conquest and defeat of all those who disagree with its brand of Islam. It is an entirely different worldview, but a view that festivities not just with the non-Moslem world but within the Moslem world as well. The TTP is their Pak chapter. Those geniuses who think that the Constitution of Pakistain with its Islamic provisions will be enough to mollify the Taliban's Islamic sensibilities are living in a fool's paradise. The Taliban look at our constitution and do not see a document promising them their version of Islamic rule but the sheer hypocrisy of the people of Pakistain. The constitution speaks of fundamental rights including freedom of religion, equality of citizenship regardless of religion or gender, freedom of expression and speech, etc. These fundamental rights are fundamentally opposed to the Taliban worldview, and in particular, their view of Islam. So are things like courts, banks, schools, etc. Our memories are short. Such an Islamic Emirate has already been tried once: the Taliban rule over Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. They plan on resuscitating that model and imposing it on everyone they can.

So those who want to talk to the Taliban, and admittedly that is the stated position of both the PML-N and PTI, have to decide what the cost of talking to the Taliban is. Any such talks will only give the Taliban both the legitimacy and the space to regroup and strengthen. Nor is a cessation of hostilities, drone or otherwise, going to end their campaign. The Taliban did not emerge after the war on terror nor after the Afghan War. The Taliban were there in Balakot in 1831. They fought against Lord Curzon under the leadership of Mullah Pawindah. Then in 1936, they regrouped under the leadership of the Faqir of Ipi. The Faqir of Ipi, who has a road named after him in the federal capital, waged a 'jihad' against the Pak state, duly backed by the Pashtun nationalists of the time. Today, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, Faqir of Ipi's grandson, leads the Taliban in North Wazoo. He is considered a 'strategic asset' by some quarters. It remains to be seen whether he is the asset or his handlers are.

The choice from a constitutional point of view is clear. Any talks with the Taliban will be unconstitutional. So long as we claim the territories of North and South Waziristan as part of Pakistain, the Taliban are to be considered rebels and enemies of the state. It is the constitutional responsibility of the state to utilise whatever means necessary to subdue them, arrest them, and try them in a court of law. Any constitutional negotiations with the TTP would have to be within the purview of Article 256 of the Constitution, which makes all private military organizations unlawful. Therefore, the scope of the negotiations can only be limited to the terms of surrender. The state as the guardian and protector of the country cannot allow the TTP to exist as an gang, let alone use that as a means to overturn the established constitutional order. The TTP's actions, therefore, are not just illegal but fall squarely within the meaning of Article 6 of the Constitution. An argument then can be made that those who favour talks with the Taliban unconditionally are equally guilty of treason.

Posted by: Fred 2013-11-11
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=379443