Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi was in  the U.S. for talks with the State Department officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke. In fact, it was Holbrooke who convened the meeting in Washington and invited Qureshi and the Afghan Foreign Minister, Rangin Dadfar Spanta. The U.S. diplomat, who recently paid his first visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan (or 'Af-Pak' in Washington speak) and also India after assuming the new office, thought a joint meeting would be useful at a time when the administration of President Barack Obama is busy reviewing the U.S. policy on Af-Pak.

The U.S. authorities are likely to grill the Pakistani foreign minister regarding the peace deals in Swat and Bajaur and seek details about the two agreements. Qureshi would have lot of explaining to do as it won't be easy selling the peace deals at a time when the Obama administration was sending 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and seeking greater cooperation from Pakistan as part of a renewed military effort to defeat the Taliban and its allies such as Al Qaeda and former Afghan mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Strangely enough, the U.S. State Department in its initial reaction to the Swat peace deal had termed it Pakistan's internal matter and in line with the constitutional framework of Pakistan. The U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates had said his country would support similar peace agreements with the Taliban in Afghanistan as under the Swat peace deal the militants were supposed to disarm and to accept the Pakistan government's writ and institutions. Unlike the defence secretary, Holbrooke had criticised the Swat peace accord and termed it something akin to surrender to the militants.

The 10-day Swat ceasefire announced by the Maulana Fazlullah-led Taliban which was due to expire on February 25 has now been extended by both sides. The Taliban extended it indefinitely after a meeting of their central shura, or council, held at a remote, mountainous hideout beyond Matta town in the Swat valley. The government and the Pakistan Army announced that they would abide by the ceasefire, thus bringing to an end, at least for the time being, the two-year old military operation in Swat. An army spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas said the troops would hold fire and retaliate only if attacked.

The extension of ceasefire and the hope that cessation of hostilities was permanent led to jubilation in Swat and prompted thousands of displaced people to return to their villages. The violence by Taliban militants and the use of gunship helicopters, jet-fighters and artillery guns by the military in the congested Swat valley had forced the people to abandon their villages and shift to safer places. Together with the displacement of people as a result of the military action in Bajaur, this was the biggest migration in Pakistan's history and the government as usual was found wanting in meeting the needs of the displaced families. However, the internally displaced people (IDPs) feel confident in returning to their villages now that the military operation has stopped and the militants are by and large adhering to the ceasefire.

The return to normalcy and lifting of curfew also prompted the markets to stay open late in the night and for economic activity to resume after months of inactivity. The schools also reopened with a delay of one week after the winter vacations. However, the girls' schools couldn't open except those for primary students up to class four in keeping with the Taliban orders that girls up to the age of nine years only could attend school. The Taliban in Swat have been asked by their central organisation, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is headed by Baitullah Mahsud, to review their decision banning girls' education. The non-violent, pro-Taliban group of Maulana Sufi Mohammad, which mediated the Swat ceasefire, also appears to be opposed to outlawing of girls' education. The group, known as TNSM, is expected to put pressure on the Swat Taliban, whose leader Maulana Fazlullah is son-in-law of Maulana Sufi Mohammad, to reverse their decision to ban girls' education.

Maulana Sufi Mohammad, who is camping in Swat as part of his peace mission, has criticised the Swat Taliban for kidnapping for six hours and then releasing Swat's new district administrator Khushal Khan and his six staffers and ordering the abduction of certain other government employees. He has been negotiating with the Swat Taliban to convince them to stop fighting the country's security forces and give up the armed struggle following the government's willingness to enforce Islamic law, or Shariah, in Swat and rest of the Malakand region.

The decision by the secular provincial coalition government in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), which includes Asfandyar Wali Khan's ANP and President Asif Ali Zardari's PPP, to enforce the Nizam-i-Adl regulation, or Islamic law rooted in Shariah, in the Swat and Malakand region as part of the peace deal with Maulana Sufi Mohammad's TNSM has also sparked a debate in Pakistan with opposition parties and liberal and secular groups criticising it as a sell-out. They were shocked by the government's deal-making with militants who had carried out beheadings, set up a parallel administration and courts, banned girls' education and blown up schools. The government and the army, however, defended the deal as a pragmatic approach to a conflict that had no military solution. The army felt the high figure of civilian casualties during its military action was making it unpopular and winning new recruits for the militants. The provincial Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti, great-grandson of late freedom-fighter and the Frontier Gandhi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, argued that his party, the ANP, believed in non-violence and was, therefore, trying to peacefully and politically end the conflict in Swat and elsewhere in the province.

Meanwhile, the Swat Taliban while announcing an indefinite ceasefire also freed four soldiers and promised to release other members of the law-enforcement agencies and the government employees in their custody. They were hoping that the government too would release Taliban prisoners. The exchange of prisoners couldn't take place the last time when the Swat Taliban and the provincial government signed a peace accord in May 2008 and the issue caused the collapse of that peace agreement.

Close on the heels of the Swat peace deal has come the Bajaur ceasefire and truce. The Bajaur peace deal was first made public by Maulana Faqir Mohammad, head of the Taliban in Bajaur, on his illegal FM Radio on the night of February 23. Subsequently, the political administration in Bajaur also announced a four-day ceasefire. It was evidence enough that the two sides had discussed and agreed to the ceasefire as a result of mediation by a jirga, or assembly, of tribal elders from Bajaur. Maulana Faqir Mohammad said their ceasefire with the government and army was indefinite. He said the misunderstanding between the militants and the army had been removed and in future they would not fight each other. However, he urged the Pakistan government to wriggle out of its relationship with the U.S. and stop fighting America's war on terror in the region. He promised that the Taliban would not destroy girls' schools in Bajaur even though have dynamited a few in recent days and weeks.

Despite Maulana Faqir Mohammad's appeal, the Pakistan government is unlikely and also unable to get out of the U.S.-led alliance engaged in the war against terrorism. Islamabad has received more than U.S. $ 10.5 billion from the U.S. and is hoping to receive another $ 15 billion in non-military assistance in the next five years and abandoning the American alliance against terror at this stage would deprive its ailing economy of the much-needed U.S. aid. Besides, some of the militant groups have inflicted losses on the armed forces, damaged the Pakistani economy and terrorised people and ending the fight against them would amount to accepting their diktat.

However, the situation on the ground in Bajaur dramatically changed after the ceasefire. For the first time after August 6 last, when the Pakistan Army launched an intense military operation in Bajaur, the people in the area have heaved a sigh of relief and celebrated the announcement of peace accord by firing in the air. Like Swat, the common people were overjoyed by the ceasefire in Bajaur and they overwhelmingly backed the peace accords. In fact, the ceasefire and peace deals made them happier than the enforcement of Nizam-i-Adl, or Islamic law, in Swat.

Some families displaced by the military action started returning to their villages though there was no rush to return to Bajaur due to the uncertainty of the situation and amid worries that fighting could resume. The widespread destruction in Bajaur due to the military operation was also keeping the tribal people away as their homes have been destroyed and most of them lack money to carry out reconstruction work.

Presently, both the federal and provincial governments are defending the Swat and Bajaur peace deals and promising to abide by the terms of the accords. The Pakistan Army, which is keen to pull troops away from the border with Afghanistan and deploy them on the Indian border, is pulling along with the government and holding fire in both Swat and Bajaur. The military high command was also cognizant of the fact that its soldiers were demoralized fighting their own people and would be happy if they were pulled out of places like Swat and Bajaur.

There is no doubt that President Asif Ali Zardari is under tremendous pressure from the U.S. to cancel the peace accords. He has been telling the U.S. authorities that this was a temporary arrangement as his government was committed to waging war against the militants and extremists. In fact, he is on record saying that his govermnment was left with no other option but the military action against the Taliban militants in Pakistan. By agreeing to the ceasefire, he has done something that wasn't expected of him and, therefore, the U.S. feels bypassed and is dismayed. The U.S. pressure would continue and could eventually force the Pakistan government to cancel the peace deals or slow down the implementation of the peace agreements.

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