Haq's Musings: Nawaz Sharif's Opportunity: Divide and Conquer Pakistani Taliban
Talks offer by Prime Minister Sharif has caused a significant rift in the Pakistani Taliban leadership. While Punjabi Taliban's leader Asmatullah Muawiya has welcomed the offer, leaders of the Pashtun Taliban have rejected it. The split has become more serious with the Pashtun Taliban's decision to remove Muawiya from his position as the leader of the Punjabi Taliban.
"The Taliban decision making body met under Commander Hakimullah Mehsud and decided that Asmatullah Muawiya has no relation with the TTP," Shahidullah Shahid, spokesman for the Hakimullah Mehsud-led Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), told news agency AFP. In response, Muawiya has told The Associated Press that the Taliban shura had no authority to remove him because the Punjabi Taliban is a separate group. He said his group has its own decision-making body to decide leadership and other matters.
This split among the Taliban leadership should be seen by the Nawaz Sharif government as an opportunity to further divide and eventually defeat the various terrorist groups operating under the banner of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
As a first step of this divide-and-conquer strategy, Pakistani government should proceed with identifying numerous TTP factions who are ready to negotiate and begin talking with each of them separately. Instead of making concessions, the government should prolong these separate negotiations to plant seeds of distrust and discord among the Taliban factions and let them fight and weaken each other.
As a second step, the government should selectively use the Pakistani military to attack various TTP factions one at a time to reduce the TTP movement from a potent force to a mere nuisance which can be managed and ultimately made irrelevant.
During this process, the government should disregard any Taliban sympathizers among politicians, military and bureaucracy who will try to influence the process in favor of the Taliban in the name of Islam to pursue their own selfish agendas.
Such a strategy will require deep thinking, persistence, good negotiating skills and selective use of decisive military force to end the scourge of terrorism from Pakistan's national landscape. It will also require broad public support.
Haq's Musings: Nawaz Sharif's Opportunity: Divide and Conquer Pakistani Taliban
Talks offer by Prime Minister Sharif has caused a significant rift in the Pakistani Taliban leadership. While Punjabi Taliban's leader Asmatullah Muawiya has welcomed the offer, leaders of the Pashtun Taliban have rejected it. The split has become more serious with the Pashtun Taliban's decision to remove Muawiya from his position as the leader of the Punjabi Taliban.
"The Taliban decision making body met under Commander Hakimullah Mehsud and decided that Asmatullah Muawiya has no relation with the TTP," Shahidullah Shahid, spokesman for the Hakimullah Mehsud-led Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), told news agency AFP. In response, Muawiya has told The Associated Press that the Taliban shura had no authority to remove him because the Punjabi Taliban is a separate group. He said his group has its own decision-making body to decide leadership and other matters.
This split among the Taliban leadership should be seen by the Nawaz Sharif government as an opportunity to further divide and eventually defeat the various terrorist groups operating under the banner of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
As a first step of this divide-and-conquer strategy, Pakistani government should proceed with identifying numerous TTP factions who are ready to negotiate and begin talking with each of them separately. Instead of making concessions, the government should prolong these separate negotiations to plant seeds of distrust and discord among the Taliban factions and let them fight and weaken each other.
As a second step, the government should selectively use the Pakistani military to attack various TTP factions one at a time to reduce the TTP movement from a potent force to a mere nuisance which can be managed and ultimately made irrelevant.
During this process, the government should disregard any Taliban sympathizers among politicians, military and bureaucracy who will try to influence the process in favor of the Taliban in the name of Islam to pursue their own selfish agendas.
Such a strategy will require deep thinking, persistence, good negotiating skills and selective use of decisive military force to end the scourge of terrorism from Pakistan's national landscape. It will also require broad public support.
Haq's Musings: Nawaz Sharif's Opportunity: Divide and Conquer Pakistani Taliban
