Opinion An uncertain ceasefire
That elusive peace in Pakistans tribal borderlands
A day after a commander of the outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was quoted as saying that his organisation had declared a ceasefire following peace talks with the government,the militants stormed a police station in a remote part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,killing two cops,causing injuries to another four and taking away their weapons.
The TTP spokesman promptly claimed responsibility for the attack and argued it was evidence enough that reports of a ceasefire with the government were untrue. Hours earlier,he and a few other TTP representatives had angrily denied these reports in phone calls to journalists from their hideouts in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
The attack on the Draban police station happened in a settled district rather than a tribal area. Draban is in the southern Dera Ismail Khan district,not far from the volatile South Waziristan tribal region,a stronghold of the TTP and the birthplace of the late founder of the Pakistani Taliban movement Baitullah Mehsud and his successor Hakimullah Mehsud. Pakistans security forces launched a massive ground assault backed by jet fighters and gunship helicopters in South Waziristan in October 2009 and thousands of troops are still deployed there to prevent the return of the evicted TTP fighters. Almost all members of the Pashtun tribe of the Mehsuds living in the area were displaced and only a few thousand could be repatriated to their villages despite efforts by the government to improve security and rebuild the destroyed infrastructure of roads,schools and hospitals.
Attacks by militants on security forces in the Orakzai and Kurram tribal regions were also reported in recent days. The renewed round of fighting raised questions about the existence of any ceasefire. Even if there was any attempt to agree on a ceasefire,it wasnt holding.
However,there are indications that the government has been in touch with the TTP leadership through tribal elders and clerics in South Waziristan to explore the possibility for undertaking peace talks. It seems the proposal is limited to South Waziristan. The TTP commander who had made the claim about the ceasefire also insisted that their fighters had ceased all combat activities against the military since October in South Waziristan only. Though this commander had requested anony- mity,it was soon obvious that he was Waliur Rahman,the de facto No 2 in the TTP and head of its operations for South Waziristan.
The fact that the TTP fighters have launched three attacks on the security forces in South Waziristan since October 1 explained the difficulties in believing the claims about the ceasefire. Five soldiers were killed in these attacks and provoked the security forces to organise retaliatory strikes against militants. This was hardly the way to initiate confidence-building measures that were reportedly discussed when the tribal elders and clerics sent by the government met the TTP delegation led by Waliur Rahman.
The PPP-led federal government denied it was holding peace talks with the TTP,and Interior Minister Rahman Malik reiterated that militants would have to lay down arms before any negotiations could be held. The military also issued a denial and made it clear that any contemplated negotiations and reconciliation process with militant groups would have to be undertaken by the government.
President Zardaris government appeared hardly in a position to focus attention on the still unstable situation in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. It took the government weeks to appoint the parliamentary committee on the recommendation of the All Parties Conference convened by PM Yousuf Gilani for suggesting a roadmap for holding peace talks with our own people in the tribal areas,which referred to the militants without naming any group. The committee has yet to meet and it wont be able to begin its work until its members agree on the guidelines for initiating negotiations with the militants. It seems a tall order and it is widely believed that clinching a peace agreement with militants and implementing it is highly unlikely.
In fact,disagreements have already emerged on whether it would serve any purpose to hold peace talks with the increasingly fractious TTP in view of the bitter experience of the past when militants in most cases violated previous agreements and established parallel administration in not only the tribal areas but also settled districts such as Swat. Secular parties such as Asfandyar Wali Khans ANP,which attended the All Parties Conference and backed the resolution for holding the peace talks,are now arguing that negotiations should take place only with those militants who surrender arms. As many as 13 peace accords were made in the past and only two are intact,that too with the so-called good Taliban led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur in North Waziristan and Maulvi Nazeer in South Waziristans Wana area who prefer fighting the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan instead of the Pakistani military. As the militants are in no mood to lay down arms and are insisting that Pakistan must break its alliance with the US,there is little possibility that any ceasefire would hold or an accord could be reached for achieving durable peace in the countrys lawless tribal borderlands.
The writer is resident editor of The News,Peshawar
express@expressindia.com
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