Upset Pakistan slams Taliban chief’s killing
Islamabad's outrage over the killing of Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud in a US drone strike stems ostensibly from two arguments. First, that the unilateral attack has (yet again) violated Pakistan's territorial integrity. And second, that the terror chief's death has derailed the proposed peace talks between the Government and the Taliban even before they could begin. Both assertions are hollow and being amplified by the Pakistani political class to appease a disenchanted domestic audience. The premise of drone strikes being an attack on Pakistan's sovereignty, is nothing new. It is being regurgitated since Osama bin laden was killed in a unilateral raid by US Navy Seals on Pakistani soil in 2011. A statement of condemnation is the Pakistani Government's routine response to drone attacks these days, even though Islamabad's protests — their legitimacy notwithstanding — have had no impact on the US, with the latter continuing with the strikes. Although Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif brought up the issue with US President Barack Obama in September, it was clear that Washington, DC, was in no mood to change its anti-terrorism strategy. Now, with the killing of Mehsud to its credit, it has even lesser reason to reconsider the policy. In fact, according to some reports, Islamabad privately supports and sometimes even assists with the drone strikes. But in the open it has taken a different line because this is the easiest way to curry favour with the public. The people of Pakistan are tired of misgovernance and voted Mr Sharif to office because he promised to tackle the country's crippling power crisis, reinvigorate the economy, fight militancy and improve relations with India. None of these can be done overnight. But lambasting a foreign power and juxtaposing it within a nationalist narrative only requires good PR skills. This is a lesson that that Mr Imran Khan, whose Pakistani Tehreek-e-Insaf is in power in the restive Khyber Pukhtunkhwa Province, has learnt well. Possibly the loudest critic of US drone strikes, he has now sworn to block Nato supply routes that run through Pakistan into Afghanistan. Islamabad has turned that lever before — with mixed results. If the sovereignty argument caters to the common man in Pakistan, the assertion that Mehsud's death disrupted peace talks is for the consumption of the average terrorist in Pakistan. It makes the Government look like it is on the same page as the militants, but the tactic is unlikely to work. The Pakistani Taliban has already vowed revenge and the state could be the target. As for the talks, Islamabad is pretending as if it was one small step away from a path-breaking peace deal, when in reality Mehsud was killed a day before negotiations could even begin. There was absolutely no indication that the talks would have led to a peaceful resolution.
Finally, Hakimullah Mehsud had the blood of many innocents, primarily Pakistanis, on his hands. He had beheaded policemen and bombed hotels, killed soldiers and launched vicious attacks on political rallies. His group is still committed to overthrowing the democratically-elected civilian Government in Islamabad. That the regime is now tripping over itself to cry against and condemn his death, as if Mehsud was a national hero, is as ironic as it is tragic.