THE details leaked from the government-army huddle to discuss the ongoing talks with the TTP were surely meant to underline the government`s clarity, resolve and determination when it comes to achieving meaningful results in a clear timeframe on the dialogue front. Yet, the vague details passed on to the media about what was discussed and decided at the meeting only underscored just how shoddily the dialogue process has been managed so far. The very fact that the participants had to direct the interior minister to push the TTP to finally reveal its demands and to indicate to the TTP that the process will not be open-ended, suggest something that could already have been guessed at: negotiations so far have been desultory and conducted inside only the barest of frameworks and timeframes. It already seems a lifetime ago when, in late January, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced his final push for negotiations a final push that wassupplanted by yet another final push afterthe TTPendedits ceaseEre recently and which is now apparently supplanted yet again by yet another so-called final push for a resultsoriented dialogue.

What can be extrapolated from the government`s contortions over the dialogue issue is two things: one, the government wants dialogue to succeed at nearly any cost; two, the government is so keen to convince the TTP of its bona fides that it is willing to let the TTP dictate the pace and the content of the dialogue process. This is unfortunate in the extreme and can only set the stage for achieving the opposite of what the government is publicly claiming it is seeking through dialogue. But then, with an agenda that seemingly goes no further than seeking a reduction in violence to bring it down to a level that the public can live with and does not appear to have a problem with engineering peaceful co-existence between the state and theTTP, can the government really be said tohave even aconceptual understanding of what negotiations with insurgencies seeking the violent overthrow of the state are supposed to be all about? Added to the already existing and known problems has been another dimension in recent weeks: tensions between the military and the civilian leadership. It is surely not a coincidence that the otherwise voluble and loquacious TTP spokespersons have been rather quiet of late, preferring to let the media wars and the civil-military tensions remain centre stage. Surely, when the ISI is turning to using posters and banners to promote and defend its chief in the style of a political party and ministers have waded needlessly into controversies by politicising the trial of Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf, the TTP need not worry about a united state achieving anything meaningful when it comes to rolling back militancy and extremism through dialogue.