Taliban Peace Talk and Our Foreign Policy

Con­tro­ver­sial peace talks with banned Tehreek-e-Tal­iban is the pop­u­lar top­ic of the media nowa­days. Every news­pa­per and tele­vi­sion chan­nel seeks to update the pub­lic about peace talks with the Tal­iban. Our soci­ety has been divid­ed into two major seg­ments: One seg­ment of the Pak­istani Soci­ety total­ly denies this peace dia­log with the Tal­iban by argu­ing that it has not any legal or eth­i­cal foun­da­tion. Their point of view is that the Tal­iban are crim­i­nals who have bru­tal­ly killed thou­sands of inno­cent Pak­istani includ­ing civil­ian as well as mil­i­tary. The Pak­istani law does not allow the state to nego­ti­ate with any armed group who chal­lenges the writ of the state. Hence, the gov­ern­ment does not have any man­date to nego­ti­ate with such crim­i­nals with­out keep­ing in con­fi­dence the fam­i­lies of mar­tyrs. Most of Sun­ni (Barelvi), Shia, and minor­i­ty reli­gious groups are against this peace dia­logue with the Tal­iban. Sim­i­lar­ly, some polit­i­cal par­ties, espe­cial­ly MQM, APML, ANP, and Pres­i­dent of PPP have also shown their con­cern over this peace dia­logue process. It is fur­ther­more a pop­u­lar per­cep­tion in the media and civ­il soci­ety to dis­ap­prove the talks, and the Pak­istan Army also has a seri­ous con­cern regard­ing the peace nego­ti­a­tions with the Tal­iban.

On oth­er hand, PML (N), JUI, JI, and Tehreek-e-Insaaf open­ly favour this peace dia­logue. They argue that the Tal­iban are Pak­istani cit­i­zens. Ex-Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al Per­vez Musharraf’s pol­i­cy to fight ter­ror­ism forced the Tal­iban to take aggres­sive steps in Pak­istan. Sup­port­er of the nego­ti­a­tions also claimed that the ter­ror­ism in Pak­istan con­sti­tutes a direct reac­tion to Amer­cian drone attacks. They sug­gest that dia­logue is the only way to curb ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties in Pak­istan. The Prime Min­is­ter estab­lished a new com­mit­tee which will direct­ly com­mu­ni­cate with the Tal­iban lead­er­ship while ear­li­er com­mit­tees (Gov­ern­ment & Tal­iban) will play the role of facil­i­ta­tors. The new gov­ern­ment com­mit­tee com­pris­es of bureau­crats except Mr. Rus­tam Shah Mohmand. Most of the defense and polit­i­cal ana­lysts see the nego­ti­a­tions in the prospec­tive of chang­ing Pak­istan for­eign pol­i­cy espe­cial­ly with regard to issues of the mid­dle east and Syr­ia. Famous colum­nist Haroon Rashid said that Sau­di Ara­bia is demand­ing 1 lac army sol­diers from Pak­istan to engage them in the Syr­i­an war. It is said that 1.5 Bil­lion $ have been gift­ed by Sau­di Ara­bia to Nawaz’ gov­ern­ment as an ini­tial price of this demand. It also seems to be a com­mon per­cep­tion of the media that the gov­ern­ment does not agree to send the prop­er army, but they would like to nego­ti­ate with the Tal­iban in order to con­vince them to par­tic­i­pate in the war against the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment. All pro-Sau­di reli­gious and polit­i­cal par­ties are striv­ing hard to make the peace talk process suc­cess­ful. It seems like the deal has been final­ized and most Tal­iban groups agree with this offer. Tehran Radio Pash­too Ser­vice reporter Adnan Rasheed report­ed that the Pak­istan gov­ern­ment has already sent Anti Air­craft and Anti Tank mis­siles through C‑130 Aero­planes to Jor­don on the demand of Sau­di Ara­bia and this infor­ma­tion has also been ver­i­fied by the famous colum­nist Najam Sethi.

Dur­ing the recent vis­it of the Sau­di crown prince, Pak­istani Prime Min­is­ter and Sau­di Crown Prince Sule­man bin Abdul Aziz issued a joint state­ment on the Syr­i­an issue. They joint­ly demand­ed that an inter­im gov­ern­ment should be estab­lished in Syr­ia, which will even­tu­al­ly ensure peace in Syr­ia. Pak­istan Peo­ples Par­ty Sen­a­tor Farhat Ullah Baber demand­ed the gov­ern­ment to clear their posi­tion on the sit­u­a­tion in Syr­ia. Pak­istan already has a clear pol­i­cy of non-inter­fer­ence on the issue of Syr­ia and oth­er issues con­cern­ing the Mus­lim world. Tal­iban Peace nego­ti­a­tions and change in Pak­istan for­eign pol­i­cy are cer­tain­ly inter­linked with each oth­er. If the Pak­istan gov­ern­ment gets involved in the war in Syr­ia by send­ing troops, mil­i­tary and mis­siles against Syr­ia on the demand of Sau­di Ara­bia, then our state will cer­tain­ly face big (inter­nal & exter­nal) chal­lenges. Before tak­ing such unwise step, we should there­fore keep in mind that Iran, Rus­sia, Iraq, Lebanon and Chi­na open­ly sup­port the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment. It is bet­ter for Pak­istan to keep itself away from this com­pli­cat­ed cri­sis. Pakistan‘s mea­ger econ­o­my and poor sit­u­a­tion of inter­nal secu­ri­ty do not per­mit us to involve in cur­rent inter­na­tion­al war games.