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Archive for April, 2013

LETTER TO EDITOR : Musharraf and Article 6

LETTER TO EDITOR

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April 20th, 2013

 

Musharraf and Article 6

 

The Upper House passed a resolution on Friday, calling for a trial of former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf (Retd) under Article 6 for abrogating the constitution.

 

Calling the resolution an historical one Senator Raza Rabbani told the media men that Musharraf was an illegally self appointed President and a usurper and that he and his party never accepted him as the President of Pakistan.

 

If that was the case what is the legal status of the Prime Minister Gilani and his cabinet ministers belonging to all major political parties of Pakistan who were administered the oath of their offices by this illegal president?   Could an illegal usurper “legalise” their ministerial appointments  by swearing them in?  By the same virtue could their all official acts and orders carried out during their stay in the office be called legal?  Could someone more learned shed some light on this legal issue please?

 

Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)
Rawalpindi 46000
Pakistan

E.mail: jafri@rifiela.com

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Zardari & the Bank Cashier

 

This anecdote  works well for the President of Pakistan:

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President  walks into a Bank…

 

President Zardari walks into a local bank in Islamabad to cash a cheque. He is surrounded by his chamchas. He approaches the cashier and says, “Good morning Madam, could you please cash this cheque for me?”

 

Cashier:

“It would be my pleasure sir. Could you please show me your ID?”

 

Zardari:

“Truthfully, I did not bring my ID with me as I didn’t think there was any need to. I am President Zardari, the President of the United States of Pakistan !!!!”

 

Cashier:

“Yes sir, I know who you are, but poor state of the economy and monitoring of the banks because of bank hold-ups, impostors, forgers, money laundering, and bad loans underwriting not to mention requirements of the Article 6, Amendments 62, and 63rd , etc., I must insist on seeing ID.”

 

Zardari:

“Just ask anyone here at the bank who I am and they will tell you. Everybody knows who I am.”

 

Cashier:

“I am sorry Mr. President but these are the bank rules and I must follow them.”

 

Zardari:

“I am urging you, please, to cash this check. I need to buy a gift for Sarah Palin for Valentine’s Day”

 

Cashier:

“Look Mr. President, here is an example of what we can do. One day, Imran came into one of our bank branches without ID. To prove he was Imran Khan he pulled out his bat and hit a beautiful sixer out of the bank into Raja Rentals Motorcade. With that shot we knew him to be Imran Khan and cashed his check.”

“Another time, Aisam-ul-Haq came into the same place without ID. He pulled out his tennis racquet and made a fabulous shot whereas the tennis ball landed in a coffee cup. With that shot we cashed his check.

So, Mr. President, what can you do to prove that it is you, and only you, as the President of the Pakistan?”

 

Zardari just stands there thinking, and thinking, and finally says, “Honestly, my mind is a total blank…there is nothing that comes to my mind. I can’t think of a single thing. I have absolutely no idea what to do and I don’t have a clue.”

 

Cashier:

“That will do, sir. Will that be large or small denomination currency notes, Mr. President?

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Playing with fire

 

 Sunday, 21 Apr 2013
 
 

Humayun Gauhar
 
Humayun Gauhar 
 
 

Playing with fire

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Justice should be done but only under due process, with balance and equity

“The avaricious are complainants and judges too. Who to appoint counsel, whom to seek justice from?” asked our great poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz at another time, when he too was incarcerated for ‘treason’.

Banay hain ahle hawas muda’ee bhi munsif bhi

Kissay vakil keratin, kis say munsafi chahain?

Good that Faiz Sahib wasn’t also imprisoned for terrorism. Though those too were bad times but not as bad as today. Then Pakistanis had hope; today they are hopeless. Our systems are hurtling towards their natural metamorphosis. Better this way than by force for then they become martyrs and return as zombies to haunt us.

Last week Gen Musharraf appeared before a high court for placing certain judges under house arrest, which is a bailable offence. But the judge attached a terrorism charge to it, denied him bail and ordered police to arrest him. Many lawyers say that he cannot and it was another case of overstepping. Once denied bail it is up to the interior ministry to order police to arrest the accused. The police did not. Musharraf is hardly going to go looking for the police to arrest him.

Since the police didn’t arrest Musharraf, he went home. His security whisked him away because the anti-Musharraf lawyers there were in such a black mood that they feared they might attack him. It is security’s job not to be too careful and take things for granted. But a clearly partisan media that Musharraf the ‘dictator’ made independent of the state but not of the Big Business-Big Politics Combine started the ridiculous rumour that he had scampered. A paper we know well, otherwise fairly balanced called him a ‘runaway’ general. Why would Musharraf voluntarily return to face the music only to scamper? Why without getting the US-UK combine to get cases against him withdrawn or the Saudis to get him a pardon and whisk him away to one of those carbuncles they call ‘palaces’? He came knowing the knives were naked, the cases against him alive and the terrorists ready. The next day this same paper’s headline screamed: “The general submits to justice.” Musharraf returned voluntarily and embraced justice. I find it comical that he has been placed on the Exit Control List whereas he should have been placed on the Entry Control List and saved our powers a lot of confusion.

It was also comical that while Gen Musharraf was in the anti-terrorism court the real terrorists dressed like Dracula were beating up a boy outside. Probably he was pro-Musharraf. It is certainly everyone’s democratic right to protest peacefully but not to cause mayhem. This is what our flag bearers of democracy and liberalism are: if you agree with them you are good; if not they will throttle you. And they resent it when you call them ‘liberal fascists’. The classic definition of fascism is the use of the most progressive rhetoric to further the most retrogressive ends. If they were true democrats and liberals they would not take oaths under provisional constitutional orders to protect their jobs, join unelected cabinets and seek offices of any kind.

Perhaps our hapless powers didn’t seriously expect Musharraf to return and so were not prepared for it. There is no precedent for them to follow, no template to adopt. Caught in utter confusion they are thrashing around like beached whales, unwittingly putting Musharraf’s life at greater risk by dragging him around from home to court to some police establishment to an anti-terrorism court. No one is saying that real justice shouldn’t take its course; of course it must but only under due process with balance and equity. They have no right to present the general on a platter to terrorists and potential killers. If, God forbid, anything happens to Musharraf his blood will be on their hands. With police brandishing fearsome weapons milling around him in the name of security, do they know that there is not another assassin amongst them, like Salman Taseer’s police ‘bodyguard’ shot him in the back like a coward?

This coldblooded, self-confessed assassin has many supporters amongst the ‘lawyers’ who showered flower petals on him and still lionize him. Are terrorist lovers terrorists or is Musharraf who fought them both? These ‘lawyers’ beat up judges, contrary lawyers, journalists, cameramen, photographers and politicians. They are officers of the court but like serial contemnors they repeatedly bring the judiciary into contempt by their hooliganism. They obviously don’t know the law. Judges in an egalitarian state where blind justice prevails equitably and every citizen is equal before the law should have cancelled their licenses and imprisoned them for mayhem and causing grievous bodily harm – or are they scared of them? The chief justice took nary any notice. But I suppose some citizens are more equal then others, what? This state has become Bedlam.

The government instituted this particular case against Musharraf for placing certain judges under house arrest on the instructions of the judiciary. Some of the same judges are still in various courts, including the chief justice, whether they sit on the bench hearing it or not. There is such a thing as influence. Judges are the injured party, complainants and adjudicators all at the same time, as Faiz lamented. Can judges be judges in their own cause? Can anyone? Is it due process? Many of these judges legitimized the 1999 countercoup and took oath under Musharraf’s first PCO. Are they Lilly White clean or are they a danger to Snow White? A partisan judiciary and a partisan media are the last thing a real democracy needs. They become democracy’s death knell.

Try Musharraf certainly in all cases that have been filed against him, no one is saying otherwise, but try all his “aiders, abettors and collaborators” too and only under due process. If the state doesn’t display wisdom, balance and equity and justice doesn’t flow from the courts it will soon start flowing through the barrel of a gun toted either by the army with gloves off or terrorists who don’t know what gloves are. God help us then. No one wants that for then there will be grave injustices. The prosecutors and persecutors of today will become the prosecuted and persecuted of tomorrow. We have dug ourselves into a ditch yet we continue digging. If we don’t stop digging the ditch will become our grave.

If they think that this will prevent future army interventions they could unwittingly hasten it. Just as the lawyers felt humiliated by the treatment meted out to their chief and came out in protest, the army will also feel humiliated with Musharraf’s hounding and could come out in protest in its own way. I would love to hear today’s chatter in the barracks and the messes.

If putting judges under house arrest is terrorism, then what is giving bail to numerous terrorists who went on to commit heinous acts of terrorism? Lack of evidence forsooth such outdated and ineffective laws and procedures must be changed. This was the first point in the 2007 Proclamation of Emergency. Nobody in his right mind could disagree with it. The blood of all those killed by the terrorists is on the hands of those magistrates and judges that gave them bail. So too the responsibility for the pain of those maimed and the lives destroyed of the victims’ families.

They would also try Gen Musharraf for treason under Article 6 for the 2007 emergency but not for the 1999 countercoup which the Supreme Court legitimized and became “aiders, abettors and collaborators”, as did the then president, the initial cabinet, politicians, generals, bureaucrats, editors and journalists who supported it. But in an act of legal terrorism against our collective intelligence, the last parliament of geniuses indemnified them all. If the 1999 countercoup had not been legitimized there is no way the 2007 emergency could have happened. You cannot take cognizance of the effect and not the cause.

Which Article 6 are they going to try Musharraf under, the one that obtained in 1999 and 2007 or the new one changed by the last parliament? The first didn’t contain the word ‘abeyance’, the second one does. The conclusion seems sadly inescapable that the amendment was Musharraf specific for he didn’t impose martial law nor abrogated the constitution but only put some of its articles in abeyance for a time – for 42 days in 2007 during which time he retired from the army. Is this their devious gambit of trapping him while saving their own skins, those who sat in the late parliament courtesy the NRO and pardons? Our late parliament of geniuses should have known that laws are made for dispensing justice, not extracting revenge. If these geniuses think that by indemnifying them the “aiders, abettors and collaborators” of 1999 they are off the hook they have another thought coming. There is manmade justice on earth and Divine Justice perpetually going on in Heaven. The wheels of God grind slowly but they grind exceedingly fine. There is no way that Musharraf can be tried for ‘high treason’ only for the 2007 emergency and not for the 1999 countercoup along with all “aiders, abettors and collaborators”. That justice should not only be done but also be seen to be done is axiomatic; so too impartiality that should not only obtain but also seen to obtain.

The writer is a political analyst. He can be contacted athumayun.gauhar786@gmail.com

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SLAVERY IN PAKISTAN: Pakistan’s Feudal gods led by Zardari & Nawaz Sharif Play Musical Chairs to Stretch their Stranglehold on Economy & Perpetuate Brick Kiln Poverty

 Feudals and Politicians are gods of Pakistan. They have decided to destroy the country by stealing from the 180 million poor. They are good at it and no one can touch them. The reason being, that their god is ready to rescue them. It is the only global power and these guys are having a ball playing in its lap. Their god,  comes to their rescue instantly, whenever their fiefdoms are threatened. Their lord is the most powerful nation on this earth.They can kill and get away with it. Sikander Jatoi, a feudal, even in jail is enjoying “A’ Class. He is the blue eyed boy of his Zardari Sain, who told him to hang in there, till the Shahzeb Murder storm dies down and memories fade. Then Zardari will do his magic .  Sain Sikander Jatoi will be sprung from jail, by his mentor Zardari. Sikander Jatoi and his son, Shahrukh Jatoi will lead lives of luxury, protected by their god, Zardari.  Pakistanis are committing shirk, by letting these mere mortals like Zardari, Pervez Ashraf, Sikander Jatoi, and the rural khachar like Asif Pervez Kiyani continue their misrule of a nation with a great potential.  These thieves are holding Pakistan hostage,only an Act of God, can free this hijacked nation. Pakistan’s poor are becoming slaves and indentured for life, NO ONE CAN STOP THIS TRAVESTY OF HUMAN LAWS. THE CHIEF JUSTICE IS ALSO SILENT ON THIS ISSUE.

SIKANDER JATOI, AN  ANGEL OF god OF PAKISTAN ASIF ZARDARI WILL GET AWAY WITH MURDER AND ENJOYS A-CLASS IN “JAIL.”

THESE LIVES OF THESE CHILD BRICK KILN LABORERS ARE WORTH LESS THAN DIRT UNDER SIKANDER JATOI/SHAHRUKH JATOI AND THEIR PROTECTOR ZARDARI’S FEET

Two woven rope beds are wedged into one side of the room next to Sadiq’s small Honda motorcycle and a large bag of cow chips used as fuel for fires. A faded Bollywood action movie poster hanging from the hut’s weathered front door serves as the home’s only decoration. Exhausted, Shahzad and Shahbaz flop onto their beds. They have no toys, no diversions, but it doesn’t matter. They’re too tired to play.

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 Feudals and Politicians are gods of Pakistan. They have decided to destroy the country by stealing from the 180 million poor. They are good at it and no one can touch them. The reason being, that their god is ready to rescue them. It is the only global power and these guys are having a ball playing in its lap. Their god,  comes to their rescue instantly, whenever their fiefdoms are threatened. Their lord is the most powerful nation on this earth.They can kill and get away with it. Sikander Jatoi, a feudal, even in jail is enjoying “A’ Class. He is the blue eyed boy of his Zardari Sain, who told him to hang in there, till the Shahzeb Murder storm dies down and memories fade. Then Zardari will do his magic .  Sain Sikander Jatoi will be sprung from jail, by his mentor Zardari. Sikander Jatoi and his son, Shahrukh Jatoi will lead lives of luxury, protected by their god, Zardari.  Pakistanis are committing shirk, by letting these mere mortals like Zardari, Pervez Ashraf, Sikander Jatoi, and the rural khachar like Asif Pervez Kiyani continue their misrule of a nation with a great potential.  These thieves are holding Pakistan hostage,only an Act of God, can free this hijacked nation. Pakistan’s poor are becoming slaves and indentured for life, NO ONE CAN STOP THIS TRAVESTY OF HUMAN LAWS. THE CHIEF JUSTICE IS ALSO SILENT ON THIS ISSUE.

SIKANDER JATOI, AN  ANGEL OF god OF PAKISTAN ASIF ZARDARI WILL GET AWAY WITH MURDER AND ENJOYS A-CLASS IN “JAIL.”

THESE LIVES OF THESE CHILD BRICK KILN LABORERS ARE WORTH LESS THAN DIRT UNDER SIKANDER JATOI/SHAHRUKH JATOI AND THEIR PROTECTOR ZARDARI’S FEET

Two woven rope beds are wedged into one side of the room next to Sadiq’s small Honda motorcycle and a large bag of cow chips used as fuel for fires. A faded Bollywood action movie poster hanging from the hut’s weathered front door serves as the home’s only decoration. Exhausted, Shahzad and Shahbaz flop onto their beds. They have no toys, no diversions, but it doesn’t matter. They’re too tired to play.

SLAVERY IN PAKISTAN IS ALIVE AND WELL COURTESY ZARDARI’S CORRUPT FEUDAL GOVERNMENT

Brick makers and others live a life of indentured servitude known as bonded labor.

They must borrow to live, and their debts pass on to their children when they die. In Multan, Pakistan, Shahbaz, 10, unloads a cart of mud that will be made into bricks by his mother, Nazira Bibi, brother Shahzad and father Mohammed Sadiq

The Eternal Tragedy

MULTAN, Pakistan – The mounds of clay are so heavy that they have warped Shahbaz’s creaky wooden cart. The 10-year-old boy’s spindly arms struggle with the weight, about 45 pounds. He teeters as he wheels cartload after cartload to his mother, a waifish woman crouched on the ground who is turning the wet clay into bricks at a rate of three per minute. A few feet away, 12-year-old Shahzad matches his mother brick for brick. Without the help of the two boys, their daily brick yield wouldn’t be high enough to feed a family of seven. “I hate this,” says the mother, Nazira Bibi, slapping a clod of mud into the brick mold and flipping it over with a thump. “I hate the fact that my kids have to do this work, that they’re not in school. When I see other kids going to school, I wish my kids were those kids.” “But we’ve got no choice. If we don’t work, we don’t eat.

Taliban Attacks and Growth are a result of corruption and poverty

” The Pakistani Taliban’s brutal attack on teenage education activist Malala Yousafzai provided the world a window on the insurgent group’s long-running campaign against “un-Islamic” schools in the country’s northwest. But in much of the rest of the country, one of the most entrenched barriers to education comes from moneyed landowners, brick kiln operators, carpet makers and other business people who rely on a form of indentured servitude known as bonded labor. Among the victims are millions of children such as Shahbaz and Shahzad, who cannot read or write and are likely to spend the rest of their lives tethered to debt they inherited – and can never repay.

Shahbaz Sharif & Nawaz Sharif are no less corrupt than Zardari

In Punjab province, bonded labor is a way of life at thousands of brick kilns that for generations have ensnared workers in a hopeless cycle of loans and advances. The workers don’t earn enough to survive, so they’re forced to accept loans from the kiln owners. The meager pay keeps them from being able to repay the loans. When they die, the debt is passed on to their children. From the brick kilns and tanneries of the Punjab heartland to the cotton fields of the southern province of Sindh, millions are doomed to bonded labor. Kashif Bajeer, secretary of Pakistan’s National Coalition Against Bonded Labor, says there are no statistics on bonded laborers in Pakistan, but most estimates put the number at up to 8 million.

Morbidly Corrupt Government has no time to care for slavery

Pakistan officially outlawed bonded labor in 1992, but enforcement has been almost nonexistent in the face of the financial and political clout wielded by southern Pakistan’s wealthy landlords and kiln owners, who provide payoffs to keep police and administrative officials at bay. Bajeer estimates that 70% of bonded laborers in Pakistan are children, few of whom attend school. Pilot projects in eastern Punjab province have put children from 8,000 kiln families into classrooms, but those efforts have yet to be expanded to the rest of the province. “The government is supposed to provide schooling to these children, but it doesn’t take the issue seriously,” Bajeer says. “Most parents in bonded labor don’t have national ID cards, and so they don’t have the right to vote. And because of that, they are not a big priority for local lawmakers.” Many bonded laborers live in impoverished regions where few people obtain birth certificates, which are required for a national ID card. At the kiln where Bibi, 30, and her boys work, the acrid odor of chemicals from a fertilizer plant next door hangs over a dirt field where dozens of families toil amid the ceaseless clapping of brick molds as they hit the ground. Bibi’s husband, Mohammed Sadiq, also 30, readies the day’s supply of trucked-in clay by adding buckets of water and trudging through it to knead it into the right consistency. Life at a brick kiln is all Bibi and her husband have ever known. Both are children of kiln laborers; Bibi began working at a kiln when she was 10, Sadiq when he was 12. Their debt to kiln owner Akram Arain built up shortly after they got married more than a decade ago. They took out a loan to pay for their wedding, more loans to pay for the births of their five children, and still more to get through the annual monsoons, when kiln work shuts down and no one gets paid. Arain declined a request for an interview. Their current debt stands at 20,000 rupees – about $200, but to Bibi and Sadiq it might as well be $2 million. The family gets 500 rupees, about $5, for every 1,000 bricks it produces. That’s about $7.50 for a grueling eight hours of work. At midday, the family sits together for a few minutes to eat what usually serves as its lunch: a few fist-sized plastic bags of boiled orange lentils and a small wheel of bread. Shahzad and Shahbaz gulp down their lunch and get back to work. As he churns out bricks, Shahzad’s thoughts wander. He daydreams about playing cricket, or anything else to get his mind off the kiln. “Right now, I’m thinking about being far away from here,” Shahzad says, wiping a fleck of mud from his cheek. “Sometimes I dream about studying. I think about these things all the time.” Shahzad is tall for his age, with a wiry frame and jet-black hair that falls over his forehead. He is his father’s right-hand man, never needing a nudge or a rebuke to keep pace with the rhythm of the brick-making. When the wheel on his younger brother’s wooden cart gets wobbly, Shahzad fixes it in seconds. The kiln field is filled with mothers, fathers, sons and daughters squatting as they churn out new rows of gray bricks alongside ever-growing stacks of drying bricks. Only a small cluster of white egrets wading through a small pond at the kiln breaks the monotony of the landscape. If Shahzad were in school, he would be in the seventh grade. A government teacher is supposed to show up at the kiln to run a classroom in a tiny mud hut, but she appears so sporadically that most parents have stopped bothering to send their children. Shahzad can write his name but nothing else. He can count to 10 in Urdu and no higher. His younger brother, Shahbaz, winces when asked what two plus two is. He thinks for a moment, then shrugs. “I can’t do it.” Both boys know education is their way out of life at the kiln. They just don’t know how they can make it happen. “I want to go to school; I want an education to get a good job and to make something of myself, to be a respected man,” Shahzad says. “Maybe I can be a doctor. Even an office job would be fine.” As the day wears on, a dull ache creeps into the boys’ shoulders, arms and knees. The tedium wears on everyone. Nearby an argument breaks out between two families over who has the rights to a small pile of mud behind a reedy ditch. Sadiq and Bibi’s youngest, a toddler named Komal, sleeps on a bed of bricks, a small shawl shielding her face from the hot sun. Though Komal is a year old, she could fit into a shoe box. Her hands and feet are not much bigger than those of a newborn. Sadiq is convinced that Komal is undersized because she is possessed by demons, but Hyacinth Peter, a Multan-based child welfare activist who works on improving conditions for families at the kiln, says the child is severely malnourished. “She’s had so many fevers,” Peter says. “Her father has taken her to phony street doctors, and of course they don’t help at all.” By midafternoon, Bibi, Sadiq and their children are spent. A thick black plume spews out of the kiln’s smokestack, where everything from used motor oil to discarded plastic sandals are used as fuel to dry newly formed batches of bricks. Shahzad moves slowly as he digs out a new mound of clay, splashes buckets of water on top and begins trudging through the mound to make tomorrow’s mud. Sadiq and Bibi are slapping down the last of the day’s tally of bricks. As a bracing wind chills the air, the family tosses shovels and brick molds into the wooden cart and heads to its home on the kiln compound: a dark, 11-by-11-foot hut, itself made of mud and bricks. Ashes from yesterday’s cooking lay piled on the hut’s dirt floor. The family’s clothes are stuffed into plastic bags that hang from the mud walls. Two woven rope beds are wedged into one side of the room next to Sadiq’s small Honda motorcycle and a large bag of cow chips used as fuel for fires. A faded Bollywood action movie poster hanging from the hut’s weathered front door serves as the home’s only decoration. Exhausted, Shahzad and Shahbaz flop onto their beds. They have no toys, no diversions, but it doesn’t matter. They’re too tired to play.

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Owys Zemir : To talk or to balk

To talk or to balk
Owys Zemir
 
DO WE NEED TO TALK TO COLD BLOODED KILLERS FOLLOWERS OF HINDU MANIACAL EVIL DEMONS,NAMED “TALIBAN,”
WHO DID THIS(SEE BELOW) TO PAKISTAN SOLDIERS?
NO!
images-17Talks of talks with the TTP are rife. It seems the ploy of TTP has worked and even old enemies are willing to ‘forgive’ in favour of such talks. Political parties that had sworn earlier to continue this war for which so many had laid down their lives are now thinking otherwise. Well, probably in some manner, the poor souls of the dead have communicated the futility of their lives. Or has this anything to do with the elections being nigh?
So what are we talking about? Is the TTP serious in throwing down the towel or does the incumbent US withdrawal from Afghanistan has anything to do with it? Has the TTP receded on its terrorism efforts? Have they suffered such great losses that they are willing to renounce their tactics? Or is it a pure longing for peace?
To see through to the answers of the above, we must first answer a few rudimentary questions: First, what has the history of any such talks with TTP been? Second, has the offer of these talks been supported by any recession in their terror activities to show their seriousness? And, what is there to talk about? Finally, what does the TTP stand to gain or lose if it does indeed talk?
Answers to these basic questions are not too difficult. First, the TTP has never stood by any peace agreements, and how can it do so? For the very means they have adopted to successfully wage their campaign so far has that been of terror and militancy.
Second, the offer for talks should not be mistaken for the offer of a ceasefire, for there has been no recession in the terror tactics of TTP. Indeed, the first mention of these talks was coupled with increased attacks on innocent civilians and law enforcement agency personnel alike.

TTP’s demands are on the line of demanding the sky and getting away with whatever you get in between. Let’s see how practical their demands might be for the Government: They’ve asked for imposition of Shariah, which would not be conceded to. They’ve asked for complete withdrawal of the Armed Forces from the FATA area, the military would not like to transform FATA into a lawless frontier region where it has no authority and allow the TTP to consolidate their gains. They’ve asked for an end to Drone strikes and severing of ties with Washington. At most, even this demand would only result in raising some hue and cry about the drone attacks, and that is about it.

On the other hand, if the Government does decide to talk, what would be its demands? That the TTP renounce terrorism and lay down arms? TTP would not do away with their strategy of terror and militancy as this is what has got them so far. Next on the cards could be consent to the writ of the State in FATA. This would be unacceptable to TTP as it would deny them a sanctuary and curb their freedom of action. So, could there be a talk of ceasefire, assuming the government is ready to close their eyes on the first two essential demands? Now, dear reader, we seem to be going somewhere….
 

So if there is nothing real to talk about, why has TTP floated such a call and is now propagating it through their shura and proposing names of guarantors? Essentially, TTP is demanding something which the Government of Pakistan is in no position to concede to. So what does the TTP gain out of it? Actually, TTP is in a no-lose situation with the offer of these talks. If the Government is even willing to talk, this is a win situation for TTP as it provides them recognition. While, if the Government doesn’t accept their demands (which it cannot), the TTP would claim the Government to be a bunch of infidels who do not want Shariah, do not want to end drone strikes against innocent civilians (we know the TTP’s demand to end drone strikes is for their own freedom of action and not out of a love of civilian lives) and who ascribe to the patronage of kuffar. Furthermore, the TTP can get away with offer of a ceasefire (an offer the Military would hardly subscribe to). Not taxing our memories too much, we can still recall the last time a ceasefire accord was struck with the TTP: they consolidated, restructured and came back stronger, fiercer and meaner. Getting some fellow Taliban freed might even come as fringe benefits.

 

The Devils Own Followers Taliban

For the past decade, the TTP has waged devilish terror in the name of their extreme ideals. Their murderous campaign is not only restricted to law enforcement agencies as they’ve ruthlessly murdered countless innocent civilians including women and children. They’ve barbarously slaughtered, tortured, maimed, dismembered and mutilated their captives. They’ve targeted people from all walks of life, especially those who dared to raise a voice against their cruel tactics and mala fide intentions. With a sinister design, they’ve razed schools to the ground, destroyed vital infra-structure, converted peaceful areas to lawless frontiers and pushed areas under their control to the dark ages. They’ve harassed, extorted, killed, oppressed and instilled fear in the hearts and mind of the people. They’ve provided an umbrella to any and all anti-state factions and are prompt in accepting any and all terror incidents, providing them a brand name. No longer an organised single entity, they’re a loose conglomerate of a wide array of sub-groups featuring terrorists, extremists, separatists, hate groups, et al.

To allow the TTP to talk from a position of strength would be fatal. It would compromise the sanctity of countless innocent souls the TTP have mercilessly despatched to the next world and would undermine the efforts and sacrifices of our law enforcement agencies.
The TTP have played their card of “talks” wisely indeed. The timing is nigh perfect. Election season is setting in at home. Albeit slowly, the Afghan peace initiative is moving ahead. The backdrop of US announcement to withdraw from Afghanistan is significant. Pakistan is reaching out with more than its share of efforts for lasting peace in the region. If the Government must talk with the TTP, it must be fully cognizant of appropriate timings and conditions, what ground it is treading upon, what is at stake and what would be the price to pay. Caveat emptor: this could be a perilous deal, if not approached with prudence.
(Owys Zemir is based in Islamabad)

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