Let’s negotiate

Due to the demands of a majority of Pakistanis and leaders like Shahbaz Sharif, Imran Khan, Munawar Hussain and other such groovy people, the Pakistan government has signed a peace agreement with the Taliban in Waziristan and South Punjab.

The peace deal comes after several rounds of negotiations and many glasses of orange juice.

The major points of the agreement are as follows:

- Strict and puritanical LBW Laws would be imposed in the Swat and Waziristan cricket league.
- The government and the Taliban will exchange prisoners and gifts – the government will gift Shahid Masood to the Taliban to fatten their pleasure of paranoia and a liking for conspiracy theories, while the Taliban will gift the government a goat.
- The Taliban will halt attacks on barber shops, music shops and girls’ schools and instead, attack saunas, discos and driving schools. Even though there are no saunas and discos in Waziristan, the government will build a few just so the Taliban can destroy them for fun.
- The Taliban cannot display weapons in public, especially suicide bombers. They will now have to explode themselves up in caves.
- The Taliban cannot operate training camps, other than only for holding ballet classes.
- The Taliban will denounce suicide attacks. However, they can hail heart attacks in the name of faith.
- A ban would be placed on raising private militias; but holding public floggings is allowed.
- The Taliban will cooperate with the government to vaccinate children against polio – especially that variant of polio that causes delusional migraines. Thus, instead of bullets, the government will now fight terrorism with aspirin.
- Only licensed FM radio stations would be allowed to operate in the region. However, the Taliban will get to pick their own RJs.
- The Taliban will allow goats of Swat to perform duties at their work place without any fear. The women of the region, however, will have to wait for this opportunity. They are way down in the Taliban’s priority hierarchy, bellow men, suicidal boys, men, goats, more men, and Yeti, the abdominal snowman.

A similar agreement was signed with the Taliban in 2007. But the Taliban promptly disobeyed the terms of the deal and began to overrun police stations and enforce strict LBW Laws through coercion. The Taliban had blamed the government’s plan to paint the Red Mosque in magenta colour. They hate magenta.

Historically, the Pakistani Taliban is the group behind the ideological inspiration for the Afghan Taliban, which is the group behind the ideological inspiration for the Chinese Taliban, which is the group behind the ideological inspiration for the Luxemburg Taliban, which is the group behind the ideological inspiration for the Martian Taliban. It is fair to remind people that the Pakistani Taliban had sent over 10,000 fighters into Afghanistan to fight Darth Vedar and his evil forces in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was quite a trip, man. Like, far out.

The government is also close to signing a deal with Luke-ul-Skywalker, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban who was allegedly behind the brutal suicide attack that knocked off Mian Nawaz Sharif’s brand new toupee.

Cricketer-turned-politician-turned-turnip, Jim Khan, who taught some of the Taliban the art of bowling reverse swing, is not happy with the peace accord. In protest, he decided to join the Jamat-i-Islami’s ‘long march’ (which is merely 200 kilometres compared to Mao Tse Tung’s 6,000 kilometres long march, but who’s counting?).

Disagreeing with the accord, Jim Khan hurled accusations at the present government and said he was right to boycott the February 18 elections because the results have brought nothing but blood, bombs and ball tempering.

He then set out with his party workers (all seven of them), to march against the government to instate the jirga system in the Diplomatic Enclave in Islamabad.

Hearing this, President Zardari, while having orange juice with his Chinese counterpart said: “I say, old chap, it will be a ghastly understatement to suggest that this fellow is rather confused,” to which his Chinese counterpart said something that nobody understood but Sherry Rehman insisted it meant “yea, baby, yea!”

Interestingly, the terms of the Swat peace deal do not call for the Taliban to halt cross-border attacks inside Afghanistan, not that there is much left in Afghanistan to attack, except maybe some shaky magenta coloured ruins. They hate magenta.

Nadeem F. Paracha is a cultural critic and senior columnist for Dawn Newspaper and Dawn.com.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.

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