A day after an attack claimed by Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) terror outfit resulted in killings of four people in Balochistan’s Quetta, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said that Islamabad will not initiate formal talks with the outfit. Instead, Sanuallah vowed for a crushing response by Pakistani security forces against the TTP.
Sanaullah said that the government had not reached a settlement with the TTP and it had not initiated any “formal dialogue” in the past either. Reports, however, suggest a pattern of consistent engagement between TTP and Pakistani Army, latter widely perceived as the ‘real power’ that runs Pakistan.
Shrouded in secrecy, the Pakistani Army has concealed both the aims of the negotiations as well as what it is willing to offer the TTP. A report by Islam Khabar in August this year claimed that Pakistani military negotiators offered to accommodate the TTP with a safe passage back to Pakistan from Afghanistan in exchange for the TTP agreeing to a long-term ceasefire by dissolving itself and beginning to join mainstream politics.
Contradicting his denial about formal engagement between the Pakistani state and the TTP, Sanaullah later clarified that the military leadership had been authorised to hold dialogue with the TTP under the Constitution, but only with those who were ready to lay down arms and peacefully become a part of society.
He said the doors will remain open for those interested in peace and dialogue and at the same time terrorism will be crushed with full force. He said military operations were underway against the TTP and the army had the capacity to defeat terrorism.
Asked about former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s return to Pakistan, the minister said that Sharif will be available to lead the election campaign for Punjab’s provincial assembly scheduled for later this year.
About Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan
The group is a by-product of al-Qaeda’s jihadi politics in Afghanistan and Pakistan after 9/11. The TTP aims to establish an Islamic political system in Pakistan based on its extreme interpretation of Sharia law. During the US invasion of Afghanistan, many terrorists that Pakistan hosted and subsequently sent over to India’s Jammu and Kashmir turned against Pakistan for its support of the US operations against Taliban in Afghanistan. TTP subsequently began giving refuge, armed and economic support to Afghan Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other such groups fleeing Afghanistan during post-9/11 events.
Pakistani government eventually cracked down on the TTP safe havens in its FATA province but its military operations eventually prompted these Pakistani jihadists to band together and more formally ally with al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. This led to the establishment of the TTP in 2007.
Since July 2020, ten militant groups opposed to the Pakistani state have merged with the TTP, including, among others, three Pakistani affiliates of al-Qaeda and four major factions that had separated from the TTP in 2014.
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