The provincial government of the left-leaning secular Pashtun nationalist Awami National Party in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) announced Feb. 16 that it reached an agreement with Maulana Sufi Muhammad, the founder of the Islamist militant group Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM), or Movement for the Enforcement of Shariah, to end the jihadist insurgency in the area. In exchange for peace, the government has agreed to implement Shariah-based regulations in a wide area of the province formerly known as the Malakand Division and is centered around the restive Swat region. Militants in the Swat region called a 10-day cease-fire the night before talks with the government, and in another gesture of goodwill released a Chinese engineer on Feb. 14, kidnapped five months earlier. Maulana Sufi is now expected to convene a meeting of the TNSM's leadership council to get the movement to agree to end the fighting. The TNSM is one of the two largest Pashtun jihadist groups in Pakistan that fall under the Taliban umbrella and have ties to al Qaeda. The Feb. 16 deal is the latest in a string of peace initiatives attempted over the past several months to contain the insurgency, given Pakistan's inability to use force to settle the issue. Getting the militants to end the fighting is not the only complication in carrying out this preliminary peace deal (which has no set time frame). There are disagreements within the government at various levels about the idea of bending to the Taliban's demands. While NWFP Chief Minister Amir Haider Khan Hoti has called for support for his government's move to implement the Shariah-based laws — the Nizam-i-Adl (Justice System) Regulations-2009 — and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has expressed for the negotiated settlement, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said he would not endorse the new deal unless it was clear that the insurgency had been brought to an end. Furthermore, there are growing rifts between the prime minister and president (both from the ruling Pakistan People's Party), with the army reportedly backing Gilani to contain Zardari. But even before the central government makes a decision on the peace deal, the provincial government must craft the new legislation. This presents another world of problems, since there are already several existing Shariah laws on the books as a result of several decades' worth of attempts to deal with the problem of a non-functioning legal and judicial system. The TNSM's rise was due largely in part to its ability to exploit the chaotic situation with law and order in the area and the ultraconservative religious local culture. (click image to enlarge) Assuming that the negotiated area does get a new set of religious laws — which is not likely — the move will not lead to the containment of the jihadist insurgency. If anything, the government's weak negotiating position will only consolidate the Taliban's influence in the region — not only in Swat, but in the area covered by the deal, including at least the districts of Malakand, Dir, Swat, Shangla and Buner. This is not the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) — the historically autonomous small region straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border — but Pakistan proper, and these districts form a major sub-set of the northern part of the NWFP. This indicates just how far things have deteriorated. With the NWFP's southern districts along the tribal badlands also experiencing a creeping Talibanization, a Pakistani Taliban stronghold in the north could very well translate into the province falling to the Taliban in the not too distant future. Put differently, the FATA, NWFP and even the northwestern part of Balochistan (the southwestern province's Pashtun corridor) could exhibit Afghanistan-like conditions where Pakistani security forces would have to struggle harder to impose the waning writ of the state. Clearly, this potential scenario has massive implications for the new U.S. strategy for Afghanistan. Washington, already alarmed at Pakistan's inability and/or unwillingness to contain the jihadist threat, has intensified its unilateral air strikes inside Pakistan's tribal belt. The largest such attacks took place Feb. 14, and one occurred Feb. 16 in Kurram agency — an area where U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle attacks have not happened before. Should the situation continue to deteriorate as a result of this peacemaking, U.S. forces could be forced to strike deeper into Pakistan proper in the NWFP and Balochistan provinces where both al Qaeda and Taliban high-value targets are likely located. Furthermore, the Feb. 16 deal raises more doubts about the viability of the NATO supply route that runs from Peshawar to the Khyber Pass. More importantly, this peace deal offers the Obama administration a glimpse of what to expect as it moves toward a political settlement with Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Should the deal with the militants in Pakistan lead to the establishment of a Taliban "emirate" of sorts centered in Swat, it will only further embolden the Afghan Taliban as they push for a comeback. And a return of the Taliban to the corridors of power in Afghanistan could prove detrimental to the security of Pakistan. This is ironic considering that the Pakistani state supports the return of a Taliban-dominated regime in Kabul. In the past, such a regime served Pakistani national security interests . But with the Talibanization of the Pakistani northwest — especially in the last two years — the Pakistanis have lost control of their own territory and are not in a position to regain influence in Afghanistan. Therefore, if the United States allows Pakistan to become involved in Washington's negotiations with the Taliban, Islamabad will not be seizing an opportunity to project power beyond its borders; rather, it will be looking to protect itself from a threat that is both internal and external. Between the Pakistanis playing defense and the United States struggling to craft a strategy for Afghanistan, the outlook is very bleak for Southwest Asia.