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.
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