Source: ET
It is amazing how fear can induce individuals, groups, even entire societies to lie, dissemble, surrender their will, and hide from the ugly reality. Fear generates pusillanimity, grotesqueries, chicaneries and charlatans.
Take the example of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and us. Since a drone strike took out Waliur Rehman, the TTP second-in-command but effectively the terrorist conglomerate’s operational chief, it seems we have all gone into mourning. Maulana Samiul Haq wants us to apologise to the TTP. Maulana Fazlur Rehman is grieved that now the TTP has pulled out of talks and the state of Pakistan must consider this a golden opportunity lost. Others think the United States has, as is its wont, sabotaged another opportunity of making peace with the terrorists.
In plain English, this is bunkum. Would someone indicate to me the womb from whence this certainty of talks offer by the TTP is birthed? Or such talks, if talk we did, would lead to the end of gratuitous bloodletting by the TTP? Or better still, as the thinking in some quarters goes, that with Pakistan streamlining its foreign policy in line with the TTP’s wishes — command is a more appropriate word — and isolating itself, the TTP would surrender its weapons and its motive and somehow dissipate?