BackThe futility of talks with the Taliban
Talks with the Taliban show the progressive erosion of the Pakistani state
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Last week, Pakistan’s government began talks with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the strongest insurgent force in the country now. The talks started a month after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif declared his intention to reach a compromise with the TTP through dialogue. What is happening in Pakistan has interesting parallels in India.
The Pakistan Taliban, as the group is called, wants the imposition of Shariah in the country and does not recognize the existing Constitution. Most of the group’s violent attacks, which are routine occurrences, specifically target civilians.
Four negotiators for the government (none of them elected representatives) and three negotiators for the Pakistan Taliban met in Islamabad on Thursday. After the talks a joint statement was issued which described the talks as “cordial". The statements issued later by a TTP spokesman conveyed a different flavour.
On Friday, Pakistan’s The News International reported that TTP spokesman Shahidullah Shahid had made it “clear that the talks will be held only under the Quran and Sunnah". Shahid told the BBC that “the talks with the government were meant to enforce the Shariah".
More signs that the “cordial" talks will go nowhere became evident when one of the three TTP negotiators, Maulana Abdul Aziz, rejected the government-nominated team’s suggestion that talks be held within the framework of the country’s Constitution. Aziz was later quoted as saying that “Pakistan’s Constitution should be replaced by the teachings of the Quran and the Holy Prophet…that should be the law in Pakistan and until the committee brings this point on the agenda I won’t be part of negotiations".
So why is Sharif’s government engaging in talks, lending legitimacy, to a group which by its rejection of the Constitution is actually rejecting the government itself?
A pressing reason is the increasing sphere of influence that the Taliban is gaining in terms of area and ideology.
The Pakistani state has no control over Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in the northwest, much of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly called the North-West Frontier Province), and since 2010 there has been a dramatic increase in TTP’s presence in Punjab, the country’s most populous province. Karachi, the sprawling and almost uncontrollable urban area in Sindh, is also part of this list.
This in essence means that the Taliban is looming large over three of Pakistan’s four provinces, if FATA is included, then their influence and ability to carry out violent attacks is uncontrollable in four of the country’s eight most important administrative units. The remaining units include Balochistan, Islamabad Capital Territory, Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Gilgit–Baltistan (earlier a part of PoK, now hived into a separate unit). Two of these four units are administrative nightmares for completely different reasons. Given this troubled state of affairs one can sympathize with Sharif’s effort to try to make some inroads towards checking the Taliban even if it is likely to be futile.
The weakness of Sharif’s strategy is that there are no clearly defined goals that the government has laid out and even if it does so eventually, getting the TTP to agree to them seems impossible. The Taliban is unwilling to agree to anything less than the adoption of Shariah and abolition of the state itself. What can the government possibly offer to this group that can lead to any sort of understanding in the future?
The governance vacuum created by a weak state fighting for space with the military has been effectively filled by a group that shuns both. People in areas under Taliban control prefer an “Islamic government" to no government at all. Pakistan is the latest example of a trend seen in countries of the larger Middle East where persons lose faith in secular governments and then, in desperation, opt for “Islamic" solutions. In the TTP’s case, it already has legitimacy in the public after decades of plundering by elected governments. The combination of the TTP having influence in a large territory and its popularity is proving to be unbeatable.
And this is the lesson India needs to learn from Pakistan: how not to reach this level of desperation. India faces a similar insurgent group in the Maoists who control territories in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Odisha. Like the Taliban, they too enjoy support among different groups. In India it is the intellectuals in universities and tribals on the ground; In Pakistan, the base of the Taliban is larger and more widespread. So on both scores, territory and support base, the Taliban poses a larger danger in Pakistan than the Maoists in India. In both cases, however, it is governance failures that have made them very strong.
The analogy between the two is not stretched and the point is complementary. In India, because of the large territory of the country, the Maoist threat is not considered dangerous for the state. Pakistan does not enjoy that comfort. It is just a matter of how much the poison has spread. The Indian government has no reason to be smug. Pakistan is a good example of what happens when extremist ideologies are left unchecked.
Do “talks" with extremists serve any purpose?
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