Only war as a policy is wrong, just as only negotiations as a policy is meaningless. The right balance is captured best though a bit tritely in talk talk, fight fight. You talk to those who are ready to talk and you fight those who are not. Sometimes you talk and fight at the same time.
The end goal has to be the cessation of fighting and a negotiated settlement. This is what Imran Khan believes in. You cant kill your way to peace because even if successful it is the peace of the dead. Many dead. Hundreds, thousands perhaps, tens of thousand dead. A virtual genocide.
That is a bad path to peace even if it were possible. And it seldom is. Liberals Pakistani style who should rightly be called eclectics - they change their stripes from tigers to doves depending on the conflict often quote Sri Lankas outright military victory as a model. This is typical oversimplification. It was a different battle, different circumstances. Against a minority in an Island with few escape routes. Still it took 30 years. Not really relevant to our situation.
We have to isolate the really bad eggs from those who are reconcilable. And yes, there is no shortage of savages in the Taliban ranks. Those TTP types who claim responsibility for shooting Malala are nothing but savages. Imran Khan condemned them by name when he went to a Peshawar hospital to see her. PTI condemned them. I, the Info Secretary did on behalf of the party on talk shows. Yet the propaganda persists that Imran Khan and PTI are soft on terrorists.
No Sir, Imran Khan is not soft on terrorists. Imran Khan and his party always condemn terrorist attacks and its perpetrators. The difference is that Imran Khan is the only politician in Pakistan who has a comprehensive vision for peace. Based on talk talk but never ruling out fight fight.
Why is talk talk necessary? Taliban are neither a monolithic entity nor everyone among them is out to capture the state by force. Many, perhaps a majority, are fighting a private war because their families, their loved ones, their close relatives, have been killed by drone strikes or military action. They want revenge because they have been brutalised and these people do not find it easy to forgive.
They are not the hard-core ideologues. They are more often the foot soldiers or minor commanders. Their agenda is simple. Kill those who killed their kith and kin. If they find a partner for peace they can trust; someone whom they do not consider to be talking with a forked tongue yes we have made promises and not kept them they will talk. They can reconcile. They can give up the fight. Provided their opposite number is someone they can trust.
Not all would. There are foreigners out there who gain nothing through peace with Pakistan. There are our own ideologues Punjabi, Pakhtun indeed all shades of our people who have no desire to reconcile. They do indeed want to capture the state. They will fight to the bitter end. And we must fight them.
But, the vision that Imran Khan has is that a large majority is reconcilable. They can be won over through a credible peace initiative. This would leave the dead enders, perhaps ten or twenty percent of the total fighting force. Denied of an army they would turn to criminality as some are already doing. They are the ones that can be tackled by force.
