PESHAWAR:
Announcing to end the 40-day ceasefire, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan
(TTP) on Wednesday said they would not extend the truce and threatened
to give a ‘tit-for-tat’ response to the government if it used force
against them.
However, the Taliban expressed
willingness to continue the peace talks with the government if it showed
sincerity and seriousness.“It’s not good news for the common people as
they may have been expecting something different from us. But we are
forced to end our 40-day ceasefire as the government, despite having a
ceasefire, continued violence against our people in the whole country,”
said Shahidullah Shahid, the spokesman for the outlawed TTP.
He
called this correspondent from somewhere in the tribal areas, along the
Afghan border, and argued that the decision to end the ceasefire with
the government was made in the central Shura of the Taliban on
Wednesday.
“You may know that majority of our people were
not happy when we announced the ceasefire initially on March 1, 2014.
But despite their opposition, we followed the ceasefire and in return we
made some demands from the government such as release of civilian
prisoners, ending the crackdown on our people and stopping torture on
Taliban prisoners in jails and secret detention centres. And the last
demand was about a peace zone for us within thetribal areas,” the
Taliban spokesman explained.
However, he alleged that the
government and its law enforcement agencies had violated the ceasefire
and accelerated actions against their people all over the
country.“During this 40-day ceasefire, the government forces and
agencies killed our 50 people during raids and in jails and threw out
their bodies. Most of our people were arrested and tortured to death in
Karachi and others were taken from the Punjab,” the Taliban spokesman
claimed.
He said they were not expecting any crackdown in
the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the tribal areas, but claimed the police and
secret agencies conducted operations against them in Swabi and Hangu in
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and in Kurram and Orakzai regions in the tribal
areas.
“Only in the Kurram Agency, they arrested 107
civilians during the ceasefire for suspicion of having links with the
Taliban. Seven tribesmen disappeared from one home in Thana village in
Kurram Agency for providing stay to me at their home. I can swear that I
have not been able to go to Kurram during the past one year. These are
the issues that made it difficult for us to prolong the ceasefire with
the government,” Shahidullah Shahid recalled.
He said it
was difficult for them to convince all the TTP factions on the ceasefire
as, according to him, some of them were not willing to cease fighting
against the government.“Besides our own people, we even approached other
militant groups in the country and requested them to stop the attacks
during their ceasefire. Though they weren’t part of us, they cooperated
and honoured our ceasefire,” the TTP spokesman said.
Shahidullah
said they had extended the ceasefire till April 10 and wanted to see if
the government would come up with practical steps.“The Shura members
discussed all these issues in detail and found that the government
didn’t accept even a single demand of the Taliban during the 40 days of
ceasefire, then why they would extend it,” he said. The spokesman said
they were free now and would give a ‘tit-for-tat’ response in case the
government used force anywhere in the country.
“Previously
our hands were tied due to the ceasefire but now there is no
restriction on us,” he said.Even that the ceasefire no longer existed,
Shahidullah said, the Taliban Shura had decided to continue the peace
talks with the government if it was sincere and serious.
“We
felt during these 40 days that the government is powerless in making
important decisions. The power of making decisions lies somewhere else,”
the Taliban spokesman noted.The Taliban had given a list of 800
prisoners, whom the militants claimed were all civilians.
They
wanted the government to release them from jails and secret cells of
security agencies. They also wanted to have a separate place in Fata,
especially in South Waziristan, without the presence of security forces,
where they could live along with their families and meet the government
negotiation committee.
The Taliban had disowned the 19
civilian prisoners whom the security forces had freed in Wana, the
headquarters of South Waziristan, on March 31.Omar Khalid Khurasani, a
feared militant commander and the TTP leader in Mohmand tribal region,
also issued a statement on Wednesday saying that it was the unanimous
decision of the Shura to end the ceasefire.
Omar Khalid
Khurasani had earlier announced that his faction would not extend the
ceasefire and threatened to launch fresh attacks on the government and
its installations when one-month-long ceasefire expired on March 31.
