Daily Times Editorial Nov 3, 2013

Hakeemullah’s death and its fallout Hakeemullah Mehsud, leader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), along with his deputy, bodyguard and 25 other people were killed on Friday in a drone attack on his house in a village near Miransah, North Waziristan. Clearly, this is a big blow to the TTP. Nevertheless, if history is any guide, the TTP may bounce back by electing another chief as it has done in the past and continue its activities, likely with redoubled viciousness. Hakeemullah himself rose to chief of TTP after the death by a drone attack of his predecessor Baitullah Mehsud in 2009. Already reports are filtering in that while on the one hand, Hakeemullah’s supporters planned to bury him on Saturday, the TTP shura was expected to meet urgently to elect a new leader. Hakeemullah Mehsud had a bounty placed on him of $ 5 million by the US after he appeared in a farewell video with the Jordanian suicide bomber who killed seven CIA operatives in a camp in Afghanistan in 2009. Hakeemullah and Baitullah Mehsud’s deaths by drones fall in a fairly long ist of terrorists taken out by the unmanned aerial weapons. The Pakistan government’s reaction, as expressed by Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar in a press conference on Saturday, seems to revolve around the narrative that this attack is a deliberate US attempt to sabotage the peace efforts that were poised to begin by a ‘facilitators’ delegation on its way to meet Taliban representatives with a letter setting out the dialogue offer. Sceptics and critics, however, are doubtful that the government’s claims hold water. Certainly, there was no indication so far that the TTP were willing to come to the negotiating table and in fact had set such unacceptable prior conditions such as release of all their prisoners and withdrawal of the army from FATA that indicated a lack of seriousness on their part. Theirs appeared to be a tactical position of fighting while creating the maximum confusion in the public’s mind about the talks process. Unfortunately large parts of our media too have been peddling this narrative of the peace talks being the best option, poised to take off, and offering a way out for Pakistan from a war many (including Chaudhry Nisar) argue is not theirs. To justify this line of argument, the government, Imran Khan and those sections of the media forget, and fail to remind their audience, of the trajectory whereby things have come to this pass. Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan over the last four decades is conveniently brushed under the carpet, including the fact that the Afghan Taliban emerged from Pakistani soil to take over Afghanistan, retreated to the ‘mother’ country after the overthrow of their government in 2001, and now are linked with the Pakistani Taliban inside Afghanistan as well as Pakistan. Imran Khan’s emotional claim to stop the NATO supply lines, even if it means the loss of the PTI’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government, boils down now to the KP provincial government hijacking foreign policy. That policy, according to Chaudhry Nisar’s remarks during his press conference, would involve delivering a demarche to the US ambassador, approaching the five permanent members of the UN Security Council on the drones issue, reviewing US-Pakistan relations (including presumably cooperation in the US/NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan), and drumming up support by briefing the other political parties. Chaudhry Nisar also appealed to the media to support the government at this delicate juncture. Just how delicate the juncture is, and could become, may become clear in the following days, but one fact is glaringly obvious. There are definite limits how far Pakistan can confront the US without severe damage to its interests, including economic and security aid, and perhaps worse. The need of the hour is not to get on our emotional high horse regarding ‘sovereignty’ and ‘national honour’ while claiming the US had committed, and violated, a promise to halt drone attacks during the peace efforts. A careful reading of the outcome of the prime minister’s Washington visit does not uphold this wishful thinking. We had argued in this space after that visit that the US maintained a diplomatic silence on the drones issue and refused to be drawn into any form of commitment either way. This assessment now stands vindicated by the latest developments. Pakistan cannot ‘go to war’ against the US. Our interest lies in protesting against drone attacks, which is our legitimate right, but not getting carried way by our own rhetoric to the point where we fall foul of the sole superpower.