Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governor's miraculous escape

It was a miraculous escape for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Barrister Masood Kausar. Just a few minutes ahead of his arrival at Kalaya, headquarters of the Orakzai Agency, on Tuesday a barrage of rockets fired from a nearby mountaintop struck near the helipad his helicopter was to land at. The local chapter of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan has claimed responsibility for the murderous attack that killed a young boy and injured about a dozen others including some government functionaries. Of course, the Taliban militants had succeeded in foiling the governor's plan to address a public rally. But, reportedly, he kept his cool and didn't leave the place without completing the rest of his programme which included a meeting with the tribal elders. Such an interaction between senior officials and the tribal elders is sorely missing from the post-military operations narrative, much to the disappointment of GHQ that keeps asking the political leadership to take over from where the soldiers leave. On their part the tribal elders have had done all they can to fight back the Taliban-backed militancy, often paying for their ventures with their blood. But the fact remains that ill-equipped as they generally are as compared to the highly trained and motivated Taliban fighters; so they hardly succeed in putting up a matching response. That Governor Kausar ventured out in a clearly dangerous territory it goes to his credit. After all, being the senior most official in charge of the Fata affairs after the President of Pakistan he is supposed to take the lead in extending the civilian writ to the troubled tribal region, and he was just doing that, earning in return rich kudos for his bravery and courage. If President Zardari lauded his visit to the Orakzai Agency to 'show solidarity with the people and lift their morale despite threats to his life,' the US Embassy was not much behind in upholding the right of the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 'to meet peacefully and in safety with government officials.' However, without belittling Governor Kausar's bold attempt at lifting the morale of the people of Fata, it should be said that time has come to move on from a position where the Taliban militancy was, and is, treated as merely a trouble created by a rebellious tribe - in line with the erstwhile colonial mindset. It is much more than that, in that the Taliban-backed militancy has proved its resilience by confronting the full might of our armed forces. Then, it is not that a handful of militants are involved; they are in thousands upon thousands and have a larger than expected reservoir to supply an unlimited number of hardy fighters - many with a mind and determination to act as suicide-bombers. One wouldn't be unmindful of the fact that the present government has set in motion a process to mainstream the tribal belt by introducing a set of political reforms and a fairly generous socio-economic development programme. But that has yet to show the kind of change in the tribal region that one had expected. Militancy remains untamed and uncontrolled despite so much having been done against it by the armed forces and the political leadership. However, things are likely to change now that the country's top political leadership, with clear support of the military leadership, has voted in favour of talking to the Taliban instead of fighting them. But for the national consensus on the imperative of political approach the All-Parties Conference (APC) recently hosted by the prime minister couldn't have agreed for the dramatic change on an issue of strategic importance as ongoing militancy in the tribal areas. The special committee which is expected to frame rules of the game for a dialogue with the militants must be convened as early as possible so that the process of dialogue is set in motion. Given the Pakistani Taliban have welcomed the APC resolution - unlike their counterparts in Afghanistan whose conditions for starting reconciliation process are too hard to be acceptable to the coalition government - further necessary in pursuance of the dialogue-option must not be delayed. As we acknowledge, the KP governor's daring act of showing up in an embattled area we feel the dialogue with militants as proposed by the APC should now be our best step forward. Copyright Business Recorder, 2011