Funeral ceremony being held for victims of the Dec. 16 attack on the Army Public School and College in Peshawar. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Dec 21 2014 (IPS)

As Pakistan lifts its moratorium on executions in response to this week’s attack on a school in  Peshawar, human rights groups say that resuming the death penalty will not combat terrorism in Pakistan.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced that Pakistan had reinstated the death penalty the day after an attack on the Army Public School and College here that killed 150 people – mostly children – on Dec. 16.

A resolution unanimously adopted by an All Parties Conference in Peshawar on Dec. 17 said that with Pakistan facing increasing terrorism, it cannot afford to show any mercy to those involved in acts of militancy and killing of innocent people.“This [reinstatement of the death penalty] is a cynical reaction from the government. It masks a failure to deal with the core issue highlighted by the Peshawar attack, namely the lack of effective protection for civilians in north-west Pakistan“ – David Griffiths, Amnesty International

“I announce the lifting of the moratorium on the death penalty today … The nation is fully behind us,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told the conference categorically.

Since then, four people have been hanged in Punjab province for their involvement in attacks on former President General Pervez Musharraf in December 2003 and the Pakistan Army’s General Headquarters in October 2009, but Amnesty International says that the resumption of executions after they were stopped in 2008 will not break the vicious cycle of terrorism.

“This is a cynical reaction from the government. It masks a failure to deal with the core issue highlighted by the Peshawar attack, namely the lack of effective protection for civilians in north-west Pakistan,“ Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Asia-Pacific David Griffiths said in a statement.

The death penalty violates the right to life and we are deeply concerned at the multiple violations of international law the authorities are about to commit by going ahead with their execution plan, he added.

Amnesty International also says that many death sentences are handed down in Pakistan after trials that do not meet international fair trial standards.

The government, which is under tremendous pressure to deal with terrorism, claims that it had no choice but to reinstate executions, and religious groups and political parties have welcomed the hanging of terrorists, saying that it is fulfilment of the country’s law.

Activists of the Pakistan People’s Party light candles to pay homage to the victims of the Dec. 16 Taliban attack on the Army Public School and College in Peshawar. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

Former president Gen. Pervez Musharraf said that the hanging of two terrorists on Dec. 19 was a victory for the law. “The government has finally done justice with the terrorists,” he told IPS, adding that all Taliban militants should be given same punishment because they deserve to be brought to justice. “The hanging of terrorists has fulfilled the requirement of the law of the land,” said Musharraf.

Sunni Chief Tehreek Sarwat Ijaz Qadri welcomed the hanging of terrorists and said that ultimately law had taken its course and this would go a long way towards establishing peace in the country. “It is a first step towards peace and the people have taken a sigh of relief,” he told IPS.

Jamaat-i-Islami Secretary-General Liaquat Baloch said murderers, terrorists and enemies of humanity do not deserve any concession and the law of the land calls for the execution of their death sentence after completion of trial and other legal formalities. Implementation of the death sentence will create a sense of respect and sanctity of law in society, he added.

Mian Iftikhar Husain, leader of the Awami National Party (ANP) also welcomed the hanging of terrorists and termed it a victory of the people. “The government should hang all terrorists without a distinction of bad and good Taliban,” he said, adding that the ANP believes in non-violence and is staunchly opposed to terrorism.

Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) leader Farooq Sattar said that terrorists deserve no mercy because they are killers of humanity. “The people welcome their hanging as these terrorists are responsible for creating lawlessness,” he said, pointing out that the MQM has always been at the forefront in condemning terrorists and will support any move aimed at eliminating terrorism.

Pakistan has 8000 condemned prisoners who have been awaiting the death penalty since 2008. Seventeen of them, mostly terrorists, will be executed in the next seven days.

Three convicted terrorists from the extremist group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LeJ) were handed down death sentences in 2004 and the executions were scheduled for Aug. 20, 21 and 22, 2013, but were deferred at the last moment.

Attaullah Khan was given the death sentence in six cases by an anti-terrorism court in Karachi on Jul. 6, 2004, while Mohammad Azam received the death sentence in four cases from the same court on Aug. 21. Another militant, Jalal Shah, was given the death sentence for related offences.

However, the executions were not carried out due to fear of the Taliban who had warned the government that there would be severe repercussions if it went ahead with execution of its men.

Meanwhile, Griffiths of Amnesty International warned that “the sheer number of people whose lives are at risk and the current atmosphere in Pakistan makes the situation even more alarming. The government must immediately halt any plans to carry out further executions and reinstate a moratorium on the death penalty.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Members of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party burn replica of Drone aircraft near Peshawar Press Club on May 14, 2011. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON, Oct 25 2013 (IPS)

The Washington Post on Thursday reported what it presented as new evidence of a secret agreement under which Pakistani officials have long been privately supporting the U.S. drone war in the country even as they publicly criticised it.

Most news outlets picked up the Post story, and the theme of public Pakistani opposition and private complicity on the drone issue framed media coverage of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s declaration that he had called on President Barak Obama to end the drone war.The CIA’s drone war was no longer concentrated from mid-2008 onward on foreign terrorists...Instead the CIA was targeting Islamists who had made peace with the Pakistani government.

But the Post story ignored a central fact that contradicts that theme: the Pakistani military leadership had turned decisively against the drone war for years and has been strongly pressing in meetings with U.S. officials that Pakistan be given a veto over targeting.

In fact, the leak of classified CIA documents to the Post appears to represent an effort by CIA officials to head off a decision by the Obama administration to reduce the drone war in Pakistan to a minimum, if not phase it out completely.

The Post article, co-authored by Bob Woodward, said, “Despite repeated denunciation of the CIA’s drone campaign, top officials in Pakistan’s government have for years secretly endorsed the program and routinely received classified briefings on strikes and casualty counts….”

The Post cited top secret CIA documents that it said “expose the explicit nature of a secret arrangement struck between the two countries at a time when neither was willing to publicly acknowledge the existence of the drone program.” The documents, described as “talking points” for CIA briefings, provided details on drone strikes in Pakistan from late 2007 to late 2011, presenting them as an overwhelming success and invariably claiming no civilian casualties.

It has long been known that an understanding was reached between the George W. Bush administration and the regime of President Pervez Musharraf under which the CIA was allowed to carry out drone strikes in Pakistan.

A WikiLeaks cable had quoted Prime Minister Yousaf Gilani as saying in August 2008, “I don’t care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We’ll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.”

That statement was made, however, at a time when CIA strikes were still few and focused only on Al-Qaeda leadership cadres. That changed dramatically beginning in 2008.

The Post articles failed to point out that that Pakistan’s military leadership shifted from approval of the U.S. drone campaign to strong opposition after 2008. The reason for the shift was that the CIA dramatically expanded the target list in 2008 from high value Al-Qaeda officials to “signature strikes” that would hit even suspected rank and file associated with supporters of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban.

The Post referred to the expansion of the drone strike target list, but instead of noting the impact on the Pakistani military’s attitude, the article brought in another popular news media theme – the unhappiness of Obama administration officials with the support of the Pakistan’s intelligence agency for the Afghan Taliban based in Pakistan.

The Obama administration was well aware of the Pakistani military’s support for the Afghan Taliban movement, however, before it decided to escalate the war in Afghanistan – a fact omitted from the Post story.

The vast expansion of drone strikes in Pakistan engineered by then CIA Director Michael Hayden in 2008 and continued by his successor, Leon Panetta, was justified by targeting anyone in Pakistan believed to be involved in support for the rapidly growing Pashtun resistance to the U.S.-NATO military presence in Afghanistan.

That shift in targeting meant that the CIA’s drone war was no longer concentrated from mid-2008 onward on foreign terrorists and their Pakistani allies who had been waging an insurgency against the Pakistani government. Instead the CIA was targeting Islamists who had made peace with the Pakistani government and were opposing the Pakistani Taliban war against the government.

Two-thirds of the drone strikes in 2008 targeted leaders and even rank and file followers associated with Jalaluddin Haqqani and Mullah Nazeer, both of whom were involved in supporting Taliban forces in Afghanistan, but who opposed attacks on the Pakistani government.

At least initially, the CIA was not interested in targeting the Pakistani Taliban leaders associated with Baitullah Mehsud, who was leading the violent war against the Pakistani military. It was only under pressure from the new head of the Pakistani Army, Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, that the CIA began targeting Mehsud and his organisation in 2009, when Mehsud was killed in a drone strike.

That temporarily mollified the Pakistani military. But in 2010, more than half the strikes in Pakistan were against Hafiz Gul Bahadur, an ally of the Haqqani forces who had reached agreement with the Pakistan government that he would not shelter or support any Taliban militants fighting against the government.

Nearly all the rest of the strikes were against Afghan Taliban targets.

The original agreement reached under Musharraf was clearly no longer applicable. Kayani had clearly expressed his unhappiness with the drone war to the CIA leadership in 2008-09 and again in 2010, but only privately.

Then the January 2011 Raymond Davis incident, in which a contract CIA employee shot and killed two Pakistanis who he believed had been following him on motorcycles, triggered a more serious conflict between the CIA and ISI.

The CIA put intense pressure on ISI to release Davis from jail rather than allowing him to be tried by a Pakistani court, and ISI Chief Shuja Pasha personally intervened in the case to arrange for Davis to be freed on Mar. 16, 2011, despite the popular fury against Davis and the United States.

But the CIA response was to carry out a drone attack the day after his release on what it thought was a gathering of Haqqani network officials but was actually a meeting of dozens of tribal and sub-tribal elders from all over North Waziristan.

An angry Kayani then issued the first ever denunciation of the U.S. drone campaign by a Pakistan military leader. And when Pasha met with CIA Director Leon Panetta and Deputy Director Michael Morell in mid-April 2011, he demanded that Pakistan be given veto power over the strikes, according to two active-duty Pakistani generals interviewed in Islamabad in August 2011.

Reuters reported Apr. 16, 2011 that U.S. officials had said the CIA was willing to consult with Pakistan over the strikes, but that suggestions from the Pakistani military that the drone campaign should return to the original list of high value Al-Qaeda targets was “unacceptable”.

But the Pakistani military’s insistence on cutting down on strikes apparently had an impact on the Obama administration, which was already debating whether the drone war in Pakistan had become counterproductive. The State Department was arguing that it was generating such anti-U.S. sentiment in Pakistan that it should be curbed sharply or stopped.

Obama himself indicated in his May 23, 2013 speech at the National Defence University that he was thinking about at least reducing the drone war dramatically. Obama said the coming end of U.S. combat in Afghanistan and the elimination of “core Al-Qaeda militants” in Pakistan “will reduce the need for unmanned strikes.”

And in an Aug. 1 interview with a Pakistani television interviewer, Secretary of State John Kerry said, “I think the [drone] programme will end…. I think the president has a very real timeline, and we hope it’s going to be very, very soon.”

CIA concern that Obama was seriously considering ending the drone war in Pakistan was certainly the motive behind a clever move by CIA officials to create a story denigrating Pakistani official opposition to the drone war and presenting it in the best possible light.

Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama greets Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan in the Oval Office prior to their bilateral meeting, Oct. 23, 2013. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

By Ramy Srour
WASHINGTON, Oct 24 2013 (IPS)

Even as Pakistan’s prime minister again publicly demanded an end to controversial U.S. drone strikes in his country before a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday, secret documents reveal long-time collusion with the CIA-led targeted assassination programme.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit coincided with fresh allegations this week by human rights groups that U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal regions may amount to war crimes.

On Thursday, the Washington Post said it had obtained top-secret CIA documents and Pakistani diplomatic memos explicitly confirming what was already apparent to many – that “top officials in Pakistan’s government have for years secretly endorsed the programme and routinely received classified briefings on strikes and casualty counts.”

“This whole business of ‘they [Islamabad] secretly or tacitly agreed to the strikes’ is very, very dangerous,” Jeremy Rabkin, a member of the board of directors at the U.S. Institute of Peace, an independent national security institution here, and a professor of law at the George Mason University School of Law, told IPS.

“It doesn’t mean very much to us if the Pakistani government can’t even endorse the drone programme in front of their own people,” he said.

According to Professor Rabkin, the secret deal between the U.S. and Pakistani governments could pose a serious threat to U.S. interests in the long run. “If you look at the anger of the Pakistani people, it is clear that we’ve acted against their consent, and that doesn’t do us any good. I think we’re on very thin ice,” he said.

Two days before the Post’s revelations were published, Sharif continued to to press Obama to put a definitive end to drone strikes at an appearance at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

“The issue has become a major irritant in our bilateral relations,” Sharif said Tuesday. “I would therefore stress the need for an end to drone strikes.”

However, the evidence suggests that this stance is merely a political maneuver aimed at appeasing Sharif’s audience back home.

“What we do know from sources such as Wikileaks is that in the last government at least the prime minister and the president knew about the strikes and supported them,” Christine Fair, an assistant professor at Georgetown University here and a fellow at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, said Wednesday.

Fair cited a statement by a high-ranking U.S. military official saying that “the U.S.-Pakistan relation is improving because they are letting us kill their terrorists.”

While the Washington Post documents cover the period from 2007 to late 2011, some say that the two countries have shared a covert deal on drone operations ever since the first strike in 2004, which presumably targeted Nek Muhammad Wazir, a greater enemy to Pakistan than he was to the United States as he had twice attempted to assassinate then-President Pervez Musharraf.

“The first drone strike in June 2004 was basically the first time the CIA was allowed to use drones. Musharraf had allowed the CIA to carry out these operations. That was the deal from the beginning,” Mark Mazzetti, the national security correspondent for the New York Times said Wednesday.

Afghanistan

Despite the public outrage over the U.S. drone programme, Afghanistan has been and still is the primary source of tension in U.S.-Pakistan relations, with a looming U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan set for 2014.

In a statement delivered on Tuesday at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Sharif said he believes that “a peaceful, stable and united Afghanistan is in Pakistan’s vital interest.”

However, the relationship between the two countries plunged into crisis in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. raid that captured and killed Osama Bin Laden in northeastern Pakistan in May 2011, which was allegedly conducted without the prior consent of the Pakistani government.

The government in Islamabad soon responded by blocking U.S. and NATO access points in and out of Afghanistan, creating a substantial logistical obstacle to U.S. military movements there. The supply routes opened again in July of 2012.

The Obama administration has also faced critiques over a U.S. airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers near the country’s border with Afghanistan.

Pakistan has allegedly taken steps of its own aimed at achieving a peaceful solution to the 12-year old conflict in neighboring Afghanistan.

Last month, the government in Islamabad agreed to Afghan requests to release long-time leader and founding member of the Afghan Taliban Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Pakistani authorities hoped to finally get the peace process started by having the Taliban negotiate with the Afghan government.

According to recent reports, however, Baradar may not be free at all. No negotiations have been set so far, and there have been no talks of setting up a location either. Some suggest that he is still being held captive by Pakistani authorities.

A protest in Peshawar against drone strikes. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ramy Srour
WASHINGTON, Oct 22 2013 (IPS)

The U.S. government has been engaged in unlawful drone strikes in Pakistan that are in violation of international law, and may amount to war crimes, according to a new report released here by Amnesty International on Tuesday.

The report’s release comes at a critical time, as newly-elect Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returns to Washington for his first official visit as the country’s leader since 1999."The narrative of precision and of no civilian casualties is a false one." -- Naureen Shah of Amnesty International

In the report, “Will I Be Next? U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan,” the human rights organisation provides evidence that U.S. drones have killed innocent civilians that posed no apparent threat to the United States.

Amnesty’s report notes that in nine strikes carried out between May 2012 and July 2013, at least 29 unarmed civilians lost their lives, including a 68-year-old woman who was killed instantly by two U.S. Hellfire missiles as she was picking vegetables.

The study was released jointly with a report by Human Rights Watch, another human rights organisation, highlighting the illegality of U.S. drone strikes in Yemen. The report “Between a Drone and Al-Qaeda,” estimates that in Yemen, where the U.S. is currently engaged fighting Yemen’s Al-Qaeda wing (AQAP), dozens of civilians have been killed between 2009 and 2013 by U.S. drone strikes.

“President [Barack] Obama needs to come clean about these killings,” Naureen Shah, an advocacy advisor at Amnesty International USA, told IPS. “What really matters is that the U.S. government and Congress recognise that these killings are occurring, that civilians have been killed and that the narrative of precision and of no civilian casualties is a false one.”

Indeed, while the two human rights groups call for greater transparency by the U.S. government and for accountable investigations of unlawful killings, they are not advocating for an end of the practice itself.

“Drone technology is not illegal per se, it’s just a weapon or a weapons platform. What really matters is that the U.S. government conducts any drone strike in compliance with the rules of international law,” Amnesty International’s Shah told IPS.

According to Human Rights Watch, the U.S. conducted as many as six drone strikes in Yemen, five between 2012 and 2013. Two of the attacks killed civilians indiscriminately “in clear violation of the laws of war,” and the other four strikes targeted individuals who were not legitimate military objectives.

False promises

In a speech delivered last May, Obama vowed to increase his administration’s transparency on the issue of drone strikes, shortly after three U.S. citizens were reportedly killed during a drone operation.

However, critics and human rights activists claim that President Obama has fallen far short of this pledge.

“The U.S. government continues to operate in complete and utter secrecy over its drone policy, so we still don’t know whether the government’s actions amount to war crimes,” Mustafa Qadri, Amnesty International’s Pakistan researcher, said at the report’s launch here on Tuesday.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had no comment when contacted by IPS, referring press inquiries on the matter to the White House.

At a briefing Tuesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney defended the U.S. government’s drone policy.

“We take the matter of civilian casualties enormously seriously and the actions we take are mindful of the absolute need to limit civilian casualties,” Carney said.

So far, the two human rights organisations have been cautious and have not labeled U.S. practice a war crime. Part of the reason is the lack of detailed information.

“We’re still not 100 percent sure that the strikes amount to war crimes. So what we’re doing is we’re calling on the Obama administration to come forward and demonstrate that we’re wrong,” Human Rights Watch’s Letta Tayler said on Tuesday. A more transparent approach, she said, would be a first step.

Both groups urged the U.S. government to at least offer compensation to the relatives of the victims. But the problem, they say, is that the U.S. refuses to acknowledge the strikes. So far, the U.S. government has only acknowledged two attacks in Yemen, which involved the death of U.S. citizens.

Mending relations

U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have long been a contentious issue between Washington and Islamabad, and the public backlash over civilian victims may hinder U.S. efforts against Al-Qaeda insurgents in the country. Prime Minister Sharif’s visit could not have been more timely.

“The drone issue is definitely going to come up during Sharif’s visit with President Obama, but it probably won’t be a major point of contention, since the two countries are trying to rebuild their ties,” Shuja Nawaz, the director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council, a think tank here, told IPS.

According to Nawaz, Pakistan’s prime minister is going to raise protests against U.S. drone policy, but mainly to appease his audience back home.

The two governments are attempting to mend their relations after reaching an historic low-point in 2011, following the capture of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers by a U.S. air strike near the country’s border with Afghanistan.

The White House has also recently confirmed that that it will release a 1.6-billion-dollar aid package to Pakistan, beginning in 2014. It is estimated that most of the aid will be allocated to assisting the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“In some ways, it is unfortunate that the White House announced its aid release before the Prime Minister’s visit,” the Atlantic Council’s Nawaz told IPS. “It reduces the partnership to a simple transactional relationship, while the two governments should be working more closely together on other important issues, such as better trade relations.”

Sharif is scheduled to meet with President Obama on Wednesday.

Victims of a May 17 explosion at a mosque in a village in Malakand district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which killed 13 people. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, May 27 2013 (IPS)

Peshawar is breathing a little easier. Prime minister designate Nawaz Sharif’s offer of talks with the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has rekindled hope for peace in this Pakistan border town.

The TTP have had a long run of terror in Pakistan’s northwestern Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the adjacent Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, of which Peshawar is the capital. And the terror had intensified in the run-up to the May 11 elections in the country, as bomb and suicide attacks left a bloody trail of political casualties in the region.

Tackling terrorism, therefore, would have been the foremost priority of any government that came to power. And when the Nawaz Sharif-led Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) emerged the winner, the mandate before it was clear.

Sharif’s statement that “talking to Taliban was not a bad option” has sent a wave of relief among the residents of KP, and of FATA in particular, which has borne the brunt of the militancy since 2001.

Especially as the TTP has responded favourably. Its spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan welcomed the offer and considered it a positive sign. “We are devising a strategy over the course of action to be taken in response to the peace talk offer,” he said.

Terrorism is the number one problem the new government needs to solve if it is to put Pakistan on the path to progress, PML-N activist Rehmanullah Khan told IPS. “We have lost 49,000 people, including 5,000 soldiers, to the Taliban since 2005,” he said.

Other parties too have endorsed this initiative. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI), under the leadership of former cricket legend Imran Khan, had, in fact, been at the forefront of a campaign to hold a dialogue with the militants.

The party will now be forming a government in coalition in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It has appointed Pervez Khan Khattak as the chief minister.

“We are according top priority to the establishment of peace and ending terrorism,” he told IPS. Without stopping terrorism, he said, there can be no prospect of social and economic development.

“The army has been engaged in a military operation in FATA since 2005,” Khattak added. “But the outcome has been zero and the TTP is still calling the shots in the majority of the seven tribal districts under FATA.”

If you have not been able to eliminate them by force in the last eight years, he said, talks would be your best option.

Regarding Sharif’s offer of the olive branch to the Taliban, Dr Said Akram at the political science department of the University of Peshawar told IPS that the Taliban had in March this year offered to talk with the government. “But the then government (led by the Pakistan People’s Party) did not show an interest, due to which no headway was made,” he said.

At that time, the TTP had also asked Nawaz Sharif, who was then in the opposition, as well as religious leaders like Maulana Fazlur Rehman of the Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) and Syed Munawar Hassan of the Jamaat-e-Islami, for guarantees before the dialogue.

“While in opposition, Nawaz didn’t become the guarantor, but now that he is in government and prime minister, it would be his first priority to start negotiations with the TTP,” said Akram.

Both the PML-N and PTI have also sought the help of Maulana Samiul Haq, chief of JUI’s other faction, and patron-in-chief of Pakistan’s biggest Islamic seminary, Darul Uloom Haqqania, to facilitate talks between the government and the TTP.

The influential cleric is referred to as the ‘Father of the Taliban’. “Most of the Taliban leaders are my students,” Haq told IPS. “I have been in contact with the Taliban leadership and the response has been positive.”

But he needed the full guarantee not only of the PML-N and PTI but also of Pakistan’s army chief Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, he said, before launching a formal dialogue process with the TTP.

“We are sure that peace will prevail if the government, opposition, army and the Taliban display sincerity,” he said.

Muhammad Aslam Khan, a Pakistan Studies teacher at the Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan, 50 km northeast of Peshawar, says it’s the brightest chance for the government to rein in the TTP. “The government needs to take the peace offer seriously if it wants to have peace in the future,” he said.

In fact, the people had voted for the PML-N and PTI precisely because of the failure of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Awami League Party (ANP) to maintain peace, Khan added. They saw hope in the former’s slogans of peace and would be very disappointed if they too failed to contain terrorism.

However, even the ANP, which had been in power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for the last five years and on a collision course with the TTP, having lost 800 of its leaders and workers in sustained attacks by the group, is in favour of making peace with them. “We want peace at any cost and will support the government because people have become sick of terrorism,” ANP spokesman Zahid Khan told IPS. Peace, it would seem, finally has a chance in Pakistan.