After the killing of Major General Sanaullah Khan, GOC Swat Division, along with a Lt-Colonel and a Lance Naik in a roadside bombing in Upper Dir on Sunday comes the news that the terrorists continue on the warpath. Two roadside bombs in Miranshah killed two soldiers while two members of tribal police were killed in an ambush on their convoy in Bannu. These developments have raised questions about the ability of the government to now proceed with its preferred option of talks to bring peace to the country. The icing on the cake are the preconditions the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) has put forward before it would be willing to engage in a dialogue. The two main demands of the TTP are that the military should be withdrawn from the entire tribal areas and TTP prisoners released. This, the TTP contends, is the ‘minimum’ required to develop trust and confidence as an earnest of the government’s sincerity in holding talks. The ‘maximum’ demands of the TTP, as is well known, are the imposition of sharia and allowing them to set up an Islamic Emirate in Pakistan as a whole. Since there has been no approach to them from the government so far, the TTP feels justified in declaring that since there is no ceasefire, attacks cannot and will not be halted. While Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has bravely underlined that bombs will not deter the government from the fight against the terrorists, his statement failed to pin the blame on the TTP for the General’s killing, a statement that did not even mention the perpetrators. That has led many observers to view both Nawaz Sharif and the PTI’s response to the attacks as ‘muted’. Both the PML-N and PTI fought the elections on a platform of overcoming terrorism through talks. The latter’s government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has gone one step further in announcing a phased withdrawal of the army from Malakand. No one doubts that the ground situation and the overstretched deployment of the troops requires the army to be withdrawn or redeployed elsewhere. However, a premature withdrawal of the troops who have sacrificed much to clear Swat and many other areas of the terrorists would undo all that has been achieved so far. The minimum requirement for such a withdrawal is that the civilian provincial government put in place its writ, administration and law enforcement regime in an efficacious manner to create confidence in its ability to ‘hold’ the cleared areas. The General and his colleagues’ killing in Upper Dir militates against any hasty actions on the basis of preconceived notions rather than the actual ground realities. The ‘muted’ response of the two parties who are advocates of a negotiating strategy suggest some embarrassment at the turn of events even before the first steps towards a dialogue have been taken. Neither party has indicated clearly what its negotiating stance would be, and whether the ‘minimum’ and ‘maximum’ demands of the TTP are acceptable to them. Clearly, the demands violate the very letter and spirit of our democratic dispensation and constitution. Even should they, by some stretch of the imagination, wish to concede the TTP’s demands, neither the law, constitution or political and public opinion would allow them to do so. A ceasefire, let alone peace, can only be envisaged at present on the basis of the TTP’s demands. Since these cannot be accepted, what are the ‘negotiators’ bringing to the table? Such vagueness does not a strategy make. Even the welcome news of the release of seven kidnapped workers of the Gomal Zam dam, it now transpires, was less a gesture of ‘goodwill’ as initially touted, and more the result of paying a heavy ransom to the kidnappers, an offshoot of the TTP. The military cannot sanguinely contemplate the death of such senior officers at the hands of the TTP. However, the ‘muted’ response of the ruling parties at the Centre and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa may reinforce their reluctance to pursue the struggle against the terrorists without political ownership and support. When one party, the PTI, is stuck on the refrain that if we opt out of the US’s war, everything will miraculously settle down (despite evidence to the contrary), and the other, the PML-N, seems transfixed in the oncoming headlights of the TTP without anything resembling an adequate response, the military is more than likely to keep its peace (but its powder dry) until the dialogue option has run its course without desirable results. There is little to inspire confidence that the fanatics of the TTP are reasonable or open to persuasion. The likelihood therefore is that eventually, after possibly much dithering, both the PML-N and PTI will be forced to accept the logic of using force against those unwilling to listen, let alone abandon their agenda of taking over the state and turning the country into a medieval hell, a la the Taliban five-year rule in Afghanistan. The vast majority of the people of Pakistan, including even those steeped in religiosity, do not want to be pushed backwards into a primitive state owing more to Wahabi and Salafist narrowness than Islam. The struggle for the country’s heart and soul has not just begun, it has entered what may turn out to be the protracted endgame against terrorism and extremism. *