— Minister says Taliban providing TTP ‘conducive environment’ to grow
ISLAMABAD: The minister for interior said the involvement of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) terrorists in attacks inside Pakistan should be a matter of concern for the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan hosting them, observing the resurgence of the menace of militancy in the former tribal regions was dangerous for regional peace.
The group, listed as a global terrorist organisation by the United States and the United Nations, is an off-shoot and close ally of Afghanistan’s ruling group.
The TTP has claimed responsibility for hundreds of suicide bombings and other attacks since its emergence in Pakistan in 2007, killing tens of thousands of civilians and security forces. Its leaders and fighters largely fled into hiding in Afghanistan after the government ordered a major military operation, called Zarb-i-Azb, backed by air power, against the group in 2014.
Speaking to the media in the capital after attending a meeting called to review the security situation in the country following the attack on a polio team in Quetta on Wednesday, Rana Sanaullah Khan said the rise in terror attacks is alarming but appeared confident that the situation, however grim, was not out of control yet.
He asked the provincial governments of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan to address the reported infiltration of militants lest the federal government was compelled to take the matter into its hands.
“TTP is enjoying every possible support and conducive environment in Afghanistan,” the minister alleged, a day after the proscribed outfit claimed the attack in Quetta in which at least five people, including a policeman, were killed.
“KP chief minister was not allowed [by his party] to attend meetings on evolving law and order situation chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif,” the minister said, and told Mahmood Khan that national matters were above party politics.
Turning to the domestic crises, the minister, in a thinly-veiled reference to former prime minister Imran Khan, said that “a group led by a mad, crazy person [sic] is bent on triggering anarchy in the country.”
Khan said Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party was “making every effort to destabilise the country.”
“Economy cannot strengthen in the middle of political uncertainty in the country. When they [PTI] were in government, their agenda was to eliminate opposition parties and now [when they are out of power], they are trying to destabilise the country.”
He claimed the party’s threat of dissolution of provincial assemblies is part of the plan to trigger a crisis. “If you don’t want to be part of this corrupt system then you should quit Senate, and resign from the assemblies of Kashmir, and Gilgit Baltistan assemblies as well.”
The minister said that if the party tenders en masse resignations, elections will be held only in Punjab and KP constituencies while the general election, scheduled to be held by next winter, will be held on time.
“Announcement to dissolve assemblies in rallies in unconstitutional and undemocratic. And we will try to stop the assemblies from being dissolved,” he said.
