IF they cannot guarantee no militant violence during the negotiations phase, how will they be able to guarantee no violence after an agreement has been reached? It is a question that has from the outset haunted the very idea of talks with the TTP — and one that keeps coming back each time it appears that dialogue may be attempted again. For Taliban apologists and their ilk, each time there is fresh violence — even before the facts are established, as was the case yesterday after the attack on a local court complex in Islamabad — either some unnamed third force or thinly veiled outside power is alleged to be behind the violence. The logic of this illogic: the TTP, an insurgent group with the explicit agenda of the violent overthrow of the state, is actually in favour of peace and stability, while there are other unspecified elements that want to destabilise Pakistan. Atrocious as that suggestion may be, the obvious follow-up question is: why negotiate with the peace-loving TTP at all when the elements really bent on destabilising Pakistan are elsewhere?

Of course, advocates of talks cannot admit in public what they quietly accept in private: talking to the TTP is a policy rooted in fear. If the TTP is not engaged, according to this logic of wretched compromise, they will unleash far more murder and mayhem than the country has witnessed so far — so better to talk to the TTP than to suffer the effects of blowback if the fight is taken to the TTP in its strongholds. Still, even from that original position of weakness that the quest for a deal suggests, the state can do at least two things to demonstrate negotiations will not be conducted on the TTP’s terms. First, the government and its negotiating team should make a clear demand of the TTP now: if the TTP is not to be held responsible for any violence going forward, then the TTP leadership should make explicit which sub-groups and franchises it controls and directs and which are the elements that are beyond its control. Without that explicit and formal clarity, the wriggle room the TTP has to deny attacks linked to it would be unacceptably large.

Second, the government in a joint effort with the military leadership should continue to work on a plan to knock off the remaining TTP strongholds while also tightening security in the cities and towns where blowback can be expected. That would send the clearest possible signal to the TTP that negotiations are not the only option — that the state security apparatus is able and ready to protect the citizenry and the state itself. If that resolve is shown and maintained, the TTP’s room to manoeuvre will diminish greatly.