EDITORIAL: Two more soldiers paid in blood as terrorists attacked a military convoy in the Hassan Khel area of Peshawar district the other day yet the state is still non-committal about its official policy to deal with resurgent militant activity.
On the one hand it assures the public that any attempt to take the country back to the years of suicide attacks, bomb blasts, and targeted assassinations will be crushed with full force; and rightly so. But on the other, it also indulges in peace talks with the same terrorists that killed more than 80,000 people, even releases hardened killers and proven enemies of the state, though they have not changed their plans about imposing their reading of shariah law in Pakistan, or how they want to go about implementing it.
Such incidents not only take a big toll on human life, which is a grave tragedy in itself, they also deliver the kiss of death to desperately needed foreign direct investment (FDI) in the country. Surely, nobody knows better than the government that exports and remittances combined still fall well short of the total import bill, and until and unless it can attract a lot more foreign direct investment it will need to borrow to survive and always remain vulnerable to the threat of default; as was so painfully clear over the last six months or so.
Neighbouring countries like India and even Bangladesh provide fine examples of attracting FDI to control deficits. Yet we continue to struggle because the one thing that spooks investors and markets, even more than bad news, is uncertainty. And nothing causes uncertainty like terrorism and a state unable to put a lid on it once and for all.
Times like the present require going the extra mile to get FDI. We just came painfully close to sovereign default, cannot survive without constant IMF bailouts, even friendly countries and usual lenders of last resort are becoming apprehensive, and now this year’s devastating floods have set the economy back even more; forcing increased imports of food and cotton and less exports just when the current account is truly on a knife edge.
Therefore, the last thing that the country needs is another wave of out-of-control terrorism the likes of which is still fresh in everybody’s minds.
Attempts to make peace with militants holed up in Afghanistan, that too at the behest of the Afghan Taliban, have clearly not worked because even when we were sending delegation after delegation to negotiate with the TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) and releasing prisoners that have no business to be out in the open, they remained inflexible and have never had any qualms to go back to using bombs and bullets to make their point.
That the so-called establishment went ahead with these talks without taking anybody else from the whole country, even the government, on board only makes them more controversial. Let’s not forget that parliament was only taken on board after the press made a fuss, and even now it is just periodically updated about the process and has no say in it whatsoever.
Sooner or later the military will have to finish the job that it started about a decade ago. TTP survived only because its remaining foot soldiers were able to melt away in Afghanistan when an openly anti-Islamabad Kabul was only too happy to provide them sanctuary.
It is unfortunate that the new government there failed to keep its word of sorting them out after the Pakistani government facilitated the departure of occupying forces and cleared the way back to the capital for the Taliban. But, far from watching them regroup and strike back, that only increases the need to do whatever is necessary to wipe them out completely and make Pakistan safe once again; for its people and FDI alike.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022