Accommodation with TTP: Implications for Regional Security.

There are clear indications that the body politic of Pakistan is getting Talibanised, and this creeping process poses the gravest threat to the future of the Pakistani state. Talibanisation has permeated across social and ethnic barriers and continues to engulf the entire Pakistani society. There have been members of the armed forces who have collaborated with the Taliban. Many defence officers have preferred being court-martialled rather than fight the Taliban. The attacks on PNS Mehran, the general headquarters (GHQ), the Pakistan air force (PAF) base Kamra and virtually every attack on the defence establishment bore clear signs of insider collusion and possible participation. Journalist Saleem Shehzad was eliminated for openly stating that a number of al-Qaeda and Taliban sympathisers are present within the Pakistani armed forces. The crowd often takes law into in its own hands. A mentally deranged man was burnt inside police lockup in Bahawalpur district by an irate crowd for allegedly indulging in blasphemy. There have been numerous cases where mere accusation of blasphemy has led to the murder of the accused.1 The manner in which suicide bombers have been targeting religious congregations exhibits an extremist mindset. The 2013 elections were contested under the threat of the Taliban, which ensured that the secular political parties never had a level playing ground and could not carry out electioneering. Consequently, right-wing political parties triumphed in the elections. Both Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) and Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI) came to power in Islamabad and Peshawar promising talks with the Taliban. Consequently, despite repeated attacks on the state structures and hapless minorities, both religious as well as sectarian, the state has decided to talk to the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). In a show of abject surrender, the state has virtually gone down on its knees to beg the Taliban to extend the ceasefire beyond its initial offer of 30 days.2 It is not as if the militants have stopped attacking the state, its structures and citizens. They have merely started denying any role in these attacks. New outfits have sprung up that keep taking credit for these attacks, while the TTP keeps claiming that these outfits have nothing to do with it. Most analysts believe that the Taliban's offer is a direct result of the losses suffered by it on account of the aerial bombing carried out in North Waziristan and the whole facade of talks is just an attempt to gain time and space to recuperate and reorganise. The Taliban realises that with the moving out of NATO troops from Afghanistan, it will have safe havens on both sides of the Durand Line and is merely playing for time. However, so petrified are the citizens in general and politicians in particular that they are willing to hold on to any small gesture of reconciliation made by the Taliban. In the past, this sort of appeasement by a state in terms of repeated accommodation of the Taliban and providing it with space led to its spread from South Waziristan to different parts of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as well as to other parts of Pakistan. However, the authorities seem to have learnt no lesson. The paper analyses the spread of Talibanisation in light of repeated accommodation by the state, including the ongoing talks and its impact on the security of the entire region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]