Pakistan is divided between those who want to talk to the self-styled Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and those who want to fight them. For the most part, for both camps – those in the talks camp far outnumber those in the fight camp – it is an either/or situation. This is where the problem begins.
Fighting and talking, when a state is dealing with a mix of insurgency and terrorism, are not mutually exclusive. They make two prongs of a strategy that must begin with the clear understanding that this kind of conflict cannot be ended or controlled through linear approaches.
The situation becomes more complex when the insurgency-terrorism landscape is dotted with multiple groups which might work together as well as at cross-purposes, depending on local requirements, pressures of ideology – which sets priorities – and, very often, the personality of leaders. Add to it another layer, the interests of external actors, and you get a cup full of hemlock.
The overall strategy employed by these groups, loosely configured around the franchise that calls itself the TTP, is simple. When the state builds up pressure and hits them in their sanctuaries in the tribal areas, they hit back in the urban centres. Within this two-pronged strategy, modi operandi to mount attacks can differ, as they have.
The talks camp argues that we have been fighting this war for 10 years and we haven’t won through fighting. Therefore, we need to talk to get out of this situation.
There are several flaws in this reasoning. One, low-intensity conflicts do not subscribe to shorter time lines. This is especially true when the internal conflict also takes its strength from broader regional instability. Two, just because fighting has not worked to the full satisfaction of some doesn’t mean that talking, in and of itself will.
[NB: fighting has in fact worked. The insurgents, today, do not have a free run of the tribal areas.]
Three, fighting began because some non-state actors decided to take up arms against the state simply because they believe in an ideology that is essentially suprastate. This fact is largely ignored by the talks camp. The Islamist-extremist groups do not subscribe to the idea of a nation-state or boundaries. They believe in the ideal of the Ummah and think that the nation-state, liberal democracy and the free market are western ideas foisted on the Muslim world by the colonists.
This discourse also draws on genuine grievances and the fact that the post-World War II international security architecture works to the advantage of the powers that created it. In part, or in whole, this discourse resonates with many people, not just on the Right but also on the Left.
Four, regardless of the problematic nature of the international security architecture, the state faces a threat. As an organizing principle which cannot be sustained without certain traits, including the monopoly of violence, it cannot afford suprastate mindsets and activities within which have consequences without. The talks camp’s argument that the groups currently fighting the state do so because they have been grieved by the state is specious. No state can allow its writ to be challenged. These groups are ‘grieved’ because they want to act outside of the state’s framework. If non-state actors are allowed to privatise the concept of security and foreign policy – the decision to wage war or make peace – the state’s concept, as known and accepted by all theorists, will come to an end. There will be no Pakistani state.
Five, as argued earlier, talks and fighting are not mutually exclusive. For instance, the state can talk to a group even as it fights another. This has already happened. In fact, the assumption by the talks camp that the state, in the last ten years, has only fought and never talked is factually incorrect. There has been much talking and several deals. In fact, given the fractured nature of the insurgency-terrorism landscape, the state’s strategy should be to create more fissures and isolate, and fight, those groups that cannot be reconciled. However, this must not be done by empowering one group against another.
That policy, tried earlier, fails to reduce the size of the insurgency. It also means committing the same folly again – sub-letting the task of security to non-state actors. That must never happen. The groups who can be weaned away from fighting must be made to leave the insurgency landscape, fully disarmed.
Finally, talk and negotiations require a clear understanding of how the process works and what should be expected from it.
As I wrote elsewhere, negotiation theory posits two broad frameworks: distributive and integrative. How will the pie be divided? The presupposition in any negotiation is that both or all parties believe that a point has been reached where their interests can best be advanced through talking and that a bargaining zone can be found.
Hypothesis 1: the state (Pakistan) and the TTP have decided that neither can defeat the other through unilateral action and, therefore, both must talk and in good faith.
Hypothesis 2: the TTP HQ, representing the franchise, has the authority to speak to the state on behalf of all the groups that currently dot the landscape.
Let’s consider the first hypothesis. If the TTP doesn’t come suing for peace to the state, the state’s desire to talk signals weakness. In other words, the state has conceded that it has been unable to put the militants down. So, even if the TTP cannot defeat the state, the two sides come to the table with the state having accepted that it has lost its monopoly of violence, at least to the extent of the TTP.
Put another way, the TTP has won by not letting the state win.
The next step will be distributive apropos of the size of the pie. Once the state has conceded its inability to retain its monopoly on violence, it has to enter the process of give and take. And what it can take, in theory, must be less than what it possessed before the conflict began. For the non-state TTP, whatever it can get is a gain against the state.
Such negotiations cannot be integrative — i.e., the two sides cannot increase the size of the pie. They have to be distributive. What will the state bring to the table, given the demands the TTP is going to make and of which we already have indications? The very existence of the TTP is owed to an ideology that rejects the state as currently configured.
Now to the second hypothesis: can, or does, the TTP represent all the groups? No. While this mayn’t prevent the state from talking to the TTP, the implication of this should be clear to the talks camp: talking to the TTP is not going to end terrorism, even if it could bring the level down. In other words, fighting may still be necessary.
No matter how one looks at it, the cease-fighting-and-start-talking camp remains on shaky ground. The desire is to see an end to violence. Commendable though this is, it eschews reality.
And the reality is, as I have often said, that there is no going back to the old world. We are entering an era of perpetual conflict where states will implode and explode and what happens in one place will send shock waves across. That’s what globalisation is all about. And it is an equal-opportunity offender.
The writer is Editor, National Security Affairs, at Capital TV and a Visiting Fellow at SDPI. He tweets @ejazhaider
