THREE days after a JUI-F-sponsored multi-party conference (MPC) in Islamabad endorsed the call for peace talks with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, a deadly and devastating car bombing shook a Shia neighbourhood in Karachi.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik on Tuesday blamed the TTP and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi for the act. The two militant outfits have neither accepted nor denied responsibility.

Condemnations ensued but none of the 26 political parties which attended the Islamabad conference raised any questions about the future and success of peace talks with militants in Pakistan’s troubled tribal regions amid the non-stop target killings, bombings and bloodshed.

Political expediency, it seems, has taken precedence over national security. What caused this political shift vis-à-vis Pakistan’s own war on terror since the almost back-to-back military operations in the militants’ hotbeds of Swat and South Waziristan?

The ANP’s narrative: The Pakhtun nationalist political party feels that it finds itself thrown to the wolves after steadfastly supporting the war on terror at the expense of its own workers and leaders.

For two years now, its leaders say privately, they asked and waited in vain for the political and military leadership in Islamabad and Rawalpindi to take action against the last militant stronghold in North Waziristan.

“Now we ask ourselves; why only we are being targeted,” said one senior party leader. “The answer is, because we stuck our neck out, while others chose to keep mum or maintain ambivalence,” he countered.

“If there is one attack on a military post, another post is set up. But tell me where are we going to go? We are political workers and not soldiers. We don’t have guns. I can’t afford 20 bodyguards to protect my living place,” the ANP leader said. “We have been thrown to the wolves”.

The JUI-F narrative: The use of force (to root out militancy) has not worked. The situation has only worsened and, therefore, the time to find a negotiated solution to the problem has come. The TTP has offered to talk and this should be welcomed.

“The process is being initiated,” JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman declared at the end of the MPC.

The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan narrative: Its spokesman said it wanted peace talks only if Fazlur Rehman, Jamaat-i-Islami’s Munawar Hassan and PML-N chief Mian Nawaz Sharif furnished guarantees on behalf of the military establishment to back the effort. Ehasnullah Ehsan said the TTP welcomed the MPC and the omission of the word “terrorism” from the joint declaration.

Neither the MPC asked nor the TTP offered to halt hostilities to give the peace initiative a chance. Violence continues.

The Military Establishment’s narrative: The khakis have so far refrained from offering a formal reaction to the TTP’s talk offer and the militants’ call “for a positive response” from it but privately senior security officials do not make any bones about the possible motives behind holding MPCs and the militants’ intentions.

Coming so close to the elections the MPC had been held under (militants) coercion, a senior security official said.

Instead of the ANP and the JUI-F and others holding their own separate conferences, the preferred mode, the official thought, would have been for the federal government to convene its own all-party conference to give a formal response after taking all the stake-holders on board.

The federal government: The two principal MPC sponsors — the ANP and the JUI-F — say their leaders have been asking and trying to solicit support of the federal government, and it’s President Asif Ali Zardari, for their initiatives at different times.

The president who has direct executive authority over Fata and is the commander-in-chief, said a senior ANP leader, had neither shown any interest in ordering the military into North Waziristan to finish the battle against the TTP nor did he show any interest in supporting peace talks with the militants.

“He is reluctant. It is as if, either he has been told by the military of its unwillingness to launch the operation or he has more interest in the upcoming elections,” he said.

The military says it is prepared to take action provided there is a political ownership. Now that political ownership seems to have drifted in another direction — peace talks, prompting the military leadership to egg President Zardari and Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf to convene a formal conference to mull the TTP offer. It has been two weeks and nothing has happened.

Conditions for talks: To begin with, the MPCs have at least met two of the militants’ demands. One, dropping instance on militants’ laying down weapons and two, dropping the use of word “terrorism” for the TTP’s acts in the length and breadth of the country.

Adding to these, a key member of the JUI-F sponsored Grand Tribal Jirga, Malik Ghulam Qadir Khan, a Madakhel tribal elder from Dattakhel near Miramshah in North Waziristan, said both sides (military and militants) will have to vacate their positions.

The ANP and JUI-F sponsored conferences laid down two conditions. One, TTP’s acceptance of the Constitution of Pakistan and laws of the land. The military leadership would like to add a third pre-condition, the writ of the state.

So far the TTP has not given any indication if it would agree to the conditions, saying it is waiting for a word from the military high command.

The reality check: Opinions are divided. “This is an extremely complicated and complex issue,” Khalid Aziz, head of the Regional Institute of Policy Research & Training, said.

All peace efforts, he said, had to be synchronised internally as well as with those in neighbouring Afghanistan. But he warns that equating militants with military amounts to abdicating the state.

Rustam Shah Mohmand, a former senior bureaucrat, said the military would have to leave and hand over security to the paramilitary Frontier Corps for peace to return to the tribal region. Tribes will have to be strengthened. Now they are weak and scared.

But analysts warn that this could be easier said than done. The military fears that the TTP is using the cover of peace talks to get itself reorganised and a breathing space after losing territorial control in much of the tribal areas.

“Orakzai is almost over and Tirah is next. Now they know that North Waziristan could be the next and final target as and when there is a political consensus on action. So, out came the TTP talk offer. It was aimed at dividing political class and they have succeeded,” a senior security official said.

Peace agreements with militants in the past have not worked, including the one in North Waziristan brokered by the JUI-F in September 2006 and revived in February 2008.

Of the 16 points in the agreement, only one has been enforced: the payment of compensation for the dead and wounded and to those whose properties had been damaged.

All other conditions, including those pertaining to the eviction of foreign militants, parallel administration, cross-border activities and attacks on security installations and security forces, remain un-enforced.

In 2012, according to military officials, 60 soldiers and officers were killed in North Waziristan. They were among a total of 600 soldiers and officers killed in the volatile region since the war on terror. A huge death toll for any tribal region in Pakistan!

“There is ‘peace’ only because the state has abdicated its authority,” a security official acknowledged. Government officials say the state writ was confined to the fourwalls of the forts and the administration colony.

The administration there imposes regular curfews to enable security forces to move on what is called `road opening days’. Militants maintain security in the main Miramshah bazaar and carry out anti-encroachment drives. “People are happy,” a local trader said.

But while analysts say that the use of force could be the last option on the table talks with militants would have to be well-coordinated and well-deliberated.

“A serious endeavour can be made. It should be made,” Rustam Shah Mohmand said. “I don’t see immediate success of the APC endeavours but at least these can prepare the ground for the next government. But for the talks to succeed there has to be cessation of hostilities. Talks cannot be held in an environment of coercion.”