The recent New York Times-published article from Feb. 4th, 2014, Pakistani Side Fails to Show Up at Taliban Peace Talks was written by Salman Masood. Masood effectively informs readers of Pakistani government representatives’ failure to attend a scheduled peace talk with Taliban representatives.
It seems, based on the quotes used throughout his article, that there is little hope for peace talks to actually happen. Hasan Askari Rizvi, a source that Masood referred to multiple times, said that if peace talks occur, it is “highly likely” that “the talks [will] eventually fail.” Masood also uses the opinion one of the Taliban representatives from a Pakistani news conference, as well as information from Pakistani analysts, and from Najam Sethi, a Lahore newspaper editor and talk show host to support this argument. Masood tells the story of how the peace talk was planned, and how it could or could not have helped the Pakistani government gain more control over the country, if it had taken place. He is able to make his point that it is unlikely that any peace talks will be planned after this incident, but that it is a possibility that Pakistani officials were planning on using military action rather than dialogue, anyway. Readers are also made aware of the vacillation whether direct, indirect, or the aversion of talks is a better move. The picture included in the article is that of the Taliban’s religious representatives. It allows readers to connect more with the idea of Taliban representatives in a sense, being stood up by Pakistani representatives.
Pakistan-Taliban talks fail to begin amid questions about legitimacy, fresh violence by Tim Craig, published by The Washington Post on Feb. 4, 2014 also informs readers of Pakistani government representatives’ failure to attend a scheduled peace talk with Taliban representatives. Although Craig makes the effort of pulling relevant quotes from multiple sources, the substance of the quotes seems