To be clear, the Afghan Taliban have never gone against the TTP. It thus suited both camps to treat the insurgency in Pakistan as a perfect extension of the war in Afghanistan. Many in the pro-war camp wanted to turn all of Pakistan into a staging ground for the occupation next door, and wave in drone strikes and donor money.īut many in the anti-war camp wanted to cede Swat to TNSM and the Waziristans to the TTP, offer office space, and dub them a resistance instead of what they were: racketeers and murderers. But we’d also do well to focus on what the TTP is, and how it’s responded to talks in the past.įor starters, conflating the TTP with the Afghan Taliban has been useful for both the pro-war and anti-war brigades. Much of the story we tell ourselves is inaccurate. Supporters shrugged this off: if the Americans can talk to the Afghan Taliban, they said, Pakistan can talk to the TTP military solutions are never the answer and this was all the fallout of the ‘Bush-arraf’ wars anyway.
Read: Families of APS attack victims oppose amnesty to TTP
It nonetheless sparked a debate: critics slammed the centre for not bringing in parliament, for talks not being extended to Baloch separatists, and for disrespecting the lives lost to insurgency. The news wasn’t quite new: the foreign minister had said much the same thing days ago, the president a month before that, with the establishment signposting it all along. “There are different groups which form the TTP and some of them want to talk to our government for peace,” the prime minister told an interviewer.