generalspeaking

Negotiating Peace With The Taliban

Religious fervour motivates fanatical Islamists. In a country steeped in religious devotion and extremes, the Taliban stand out for their rigid Islamism, railing against the country's lack of attention to the needs of full implementation of Sharia law. Stoning adulterers is a time-honoured method of ensuring complicity with Sharia. That Pakistan may be sensitive to the international community's expressions of horror when isolated communities practise these barbaric punishments is of little concern to the Taliban.

Afghanistan too hopes to come to some agreement with their own Taliban, stern 'scholars' of the Koran who are in reality brutish thugs like their Pakistani counterparts who deny their vulnerable children life-saving inoculations against dread diseases like poliomyelitis as representing an affront to Islamic values. When government security agencies are incapable of countering the depredations mounted on civilians and police by virulent Islamists they seek to bargain for peace.

Pakistan has gone that route many times before, with the warlords of their hill tribes who disdain federal authority over their lives. Never has any agreement been sustained. And while the government has launched itself on yet another process with the Taliban to attempt to restore some level of civil order in the country, it perhaps forgets from time to time how rife the hydra-headed jihad call is.

Perhaps not all that surprising given the complicity of the national police, the country's infamous intelligence agency and the country's military in having been infiltrated by Islamists, and supporting the anti-India, anti-Afghanistan activities of these paramilitary terror groups. A group identifying itself as Ahrar-ul Hind has claimed responsibility for the latest atrocity to hit Islamabad, the country's secured capital.

When gunmen stormed the main court complex in Islamabad Monday, on a rampage that took eleven lives and wounded 24 others in an assault lasting about twenty minutes they were geared for success. Gunmen swarmed the narrow alleys between the buildings in the justice complex, hurling grenades, firing automatic weapons everywhere. They broke through one judge's chambers, shooting him to death. Others were mowed down in the cafeteria.

Islamabad is where diplomats, generals, aid workers, government officials feel relatively safe in its quiet confines of wide, tree-lined boulevards. In 2008 a truck bomb at the Marriott Hotel killed 54 people. Two of the attackers on this occasion were suicide bombers who rushed into the fray, threw hand grenades, then began firing. Finally detonating the explosives on their bodies, according to Islamabad Police Chief Sikander Hayat.

After an examination of the scene of bloody carnage one intelligence official concluded that the attackers had operated in three groups of four each. Apart from the two who blew themselves up after an exchange of fire with police, survivors of the massacres escaped in three waiting vehicles. Mission accomplished. Prepared to launch the next assault. Mumbai serving as the template.

Labels: Atrocities, Conflict, Islamists, Negotiations, Pakistan, Taliban

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, March 04, 2014