Mediators have failed to bring peace and the fighting has spread to other areas of the tribal agency belt which is beyond the reach of the government writ. This is puzzling since the general impression is that the political leadership in Islamabad and the Taliban are on the same page for negotiations.  As of now, two groups, Khan Said Sajna Mehsud and Shehryar Mehsud groups have crossed swords and their fighting is now more than a week old. There is every possibility of the ‘war’ engulfing other TTP groups.

TTP is a conglomeration of some 60 groups, which are bound by hardline lslamist ideology and hatred towards America.  

What made the two groups lock horns is not clear. The officially subscribed view is that the quarrel started over engagement with the government. “Sajna Mehsud was in favour of a negotiated settlement of the conflict with the state when hardliner Hakimullah Mehsud was alive, but Shehryar Mehsud – like Hakimullah and Waliur Rehman Mehsud – supported continuing the war with government forces”, a report in the Lahore daily, The Nation said quoting local tribal leaders.

Sajna wanted to succeed Hakimullah when he was killed in a drone strike but Maulana Fazallullah outsmarted him and became the Amir.  He does not recognise the Radio Mullah, as Fazalullah was known during his Swat days. The Army and the ISI have no love for Fazallullah and have scores to settle with him. The GHQ has not forgiven him for going back on his “no targeting the forces’ deal he had entered into during the Musharraf rule.

The Radio Mullah had escaped to Afghanistan after the army entered Swat to crush his campaign for Sharia in the area. He retained his links with TTP from his perch in Kunar – Nuristan provinces of Eastern Afghanistan. It is this linkage that helped him to become the TTP Ameer though he is not from the dominant Mehsud tribe.   

Right from the days of Gen Kayani, the Army has branded TTP as bad Taliban.  The reason is that TTP has always displayed a mind of its own; it does not follow the diktats of its handlers in Rawalpindi, always. More over it is keen to expand its footprint beyond the hills and valleys into the plains.

 It is no surprise, therefore, that the Army is not keen on the dialogue process initiated by the Sharif government as a part of its short term pursuits. For Prime Minister Sharif, dialogue with TTP is a poll pledge. Moreover he does not want TTP to spread its net into Lahore, which has been ceded to JuD and its chief Hafeez Sayeed.

A remark of a senior member of the security establishment that appears in a “front – line” dispatch in The Nation on April 14 gives a clue to understand the TTP infighting.  “I think the security services have achieved half of their target, with the assistance of government emissaries. The TTP is now visibly divided into pro-peace and anti-peace groups, no matter what their so-called leaders claim”, the official, who had been looking after the affairs of tribal areas in the recent past, said. He further said: “It is now up to the government how quickly it would exploit the situation. The TTP is now vulnerable and that’s why its leadership has hinted at the strong possibilities of announcement of permanent ceasefire and release of prisoners”.

Put differently, the Pakistani Army is hell bent upon weakening the TTP in general and undermining the authority of Maulana Fazallullah in particular.   Najam Sethi, a noted journalist and analyst, who is close to the Sharif camp these days, has more or less endorsed this view.

“The Army wanted to weaken the TTP before talks as it knew it could not eliminate them even after five years of war,” Sethi said in his Geo News Programme, “Aapas Ki Baat” on April 13.

All this talk as to whether the Army and the government are on the same page for talks is no more than an academic exercise. The pace of talks with the TTP will be decided not by the Sharif government or the TTP but by the Army with one difference.

In the past, the Army leadership used to speak upfront. Not any longer. It is the legacy of Gen Pervez Kayani. So, his successor at the GHQ, General Raheel Sharif, will neither distance himself in public from the government effort nor will he say anything that revives the memories of Khakhi supremacy. He will carry out his plan nevertheless.