Between failures

Nadir Hassan
Proxies are most useful for providing plausible deniability, something states know all too well. In our own case, one of the many instances was the use of the Taliban in Afghanistan as a manifestation of the ‘strategic depth’ policy. We are familiar with the art of maintaining a disingenuous ‘Who, us?’ pose.

The irony of our former Taliban proxies now using proxies of their own against us should not be lost on anyone. A group calling itself the Ahrar-ul-Hind may have claimed responsibility for the Islamabad district court attack but no one is sure just how separate they are from the TTP itself. The first anyone had heard of this new group was in early February when it accused the TTP of being too tribal-areas centric, and willing to sell out the people in urban areas just so that its sphere of influence in Fata would be maintained.

The group vowed to carry out attacks should the TTP agree to a ceasefire, since the opposite of selling out urbanites is apparently trying to kill them. The attack promptly came the day after the military halted airstrikes against TTP leaders who had offered a ceasefire. The TTP promptly disassociated itself from the attack but how sure can we really be that the Ahrar-ul-Hind was acting on its own?

Previous TTP denials during periods when they are supposed to be negotiating with the government have proved hollow. The group had distanced itself from a February attack in Peshawar only to be embarrassed when its Peshawar amir and member of its shura Mufti Hassan Swati claimed responsibility for the attack.

The TTP is either an organisation whose constituent parts do as they please and are not under the control of the central leadership or the TTP is lying when it denies carrying out attacks. Given this history, would anyone be surprised if the Ahrar-ul-Hind turned out to be a ruse to permit continued attacks and is later reabsorbed into the TTP once it has served its purpose?

These are questions the government seems intent to brush off. It took the TTP at its word that the Islamabad attack was not its doing and ignored the attack on polio workers in Khyber Agency that very day. After all, who cares about a bunch of deaths in that backward area when there is the pretence of peace to keep up?

Make no mistake, the announcement of a one-month ceasefire by the TTP is a tactical move. The air strikes against the group obviously had a disruptive effect on them and now they are looking for an opportunity to regroup. The military option should obviously be an action of the absolute last resort so a temporary halt in operations is not in itself undesirable. What we should be wary of is a rerun of the previous negotiations drama, which soon turned into farce.

The TTP and its negotiating team seemed less keen on reaching an agreement than in winning a public relations battle. Maulana Abdul Aziz of Lal Masjid infamy had a whale of a time in the green rooms of talk shows, trying to give a respectable sheen to the murderous TTP. Then, when the group had enough free publicity, it revealed its true colours with the heinous slaughter of FC troops.

The TTP must be wondering, though, just what it has to do to be blamed for attacks that it repeatedly owns up to. Government officials, the PTI and the religious parties mumble vaguely and menacingly about an outside force that is responsible for the attacks because it wants peace to be thwarted. The force itself is rarely named but we can narrow down the contenders to the US or India.

The TTP can release a video of its members playing football with the decapitated heads of soldiers – football apparently being an appropriate sport for a group that denounced cricket – but we will still insist on a conspiracy being hatched in a faraway land to destabilise Pakistan. Yes, the US is an often malignant actor which should be spared no criticism. But even if the Americans had the ultimate aim of destabilising us, they have not had to put their plan into action yet since we have willingly done their dirty work for them.

At some point in the next month, probably even in the next few days, there will be another major attack. This time someone in the TTP may even take credit for it and then go ahead and blame the government for some unspecified violation of the ceasefire. Most of the opposition parties, who vehemently and adamantly insist that no sir, we are not Taliban apologists, will end up castigating the government and essentially agreeing with the militant group.

Talks, which were never close to achieving any kind of breakthrough, will collapse and the military will swing into action for a few days. But it, and the country, will not be ready to fully commit to any one strategy. We need to believe that talks will work because we have seen military operations fail. But we also need to believe that military operations will work because we have seen talks fail.

Attacks, talks, military operations. Lather, rinse, repeat. We keep walking down the same path but expect to reach a new destination.

The writer is a journalist based in Karachi.