Government will consider pardoning Pakistani Taliban if they surrender, foreign minister says

A soldier stands by ammunition seized during a military operation against Taliban militants, in the of town of Miramshah, North Waziristan, on July 9, 2014. (REUTERS/File)

• Since Afghan Taliban captured power, Islamabad has fretted over Pakistani Taliban militants crossing over from Afghanistan
• Thousands of Pakistanis have been killed in violence launched by the TTP and other groups in the last two decades

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said the government would consider pardoning the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) if the militant group surrendered to the writ of the government and the constitution of Pakistan.
Since the Afghan Taliban captured power in neighboring Afghanistan last month, Islamabad has been particularly worried about militant fighters from a separate, Pakistani Taliban group crossing over from Afghanistan and launching lethal attacks on its territory.
Thousands of Pakistanis have been killed in violence launched by the TTP and other militant and sectarian groups in the last two decades.
“If [the TTP] are willing to mend fences and not take the law into their hands and not get involved in terrorist activities and they submit and surrender to the writ of the government and the constitution of Pakistan, we are even open to giving them a pardon,” Qureshi said in an interview to The Independent this week.
The Pakistani Taliban, fighting to overthrow the Pakistan government and install their own brand of strict Islam, are an umbrella of militant groups which in recent years has broken into many divisions.
The TTP has been designated a “terrorist” group by the United States but has been in disarray in recent years due to several armed operations by the Pakistani army, and especially after many of its top leaders were killed by US drone strikes on both sides of the Pak-Afghan border, forcing its members into shelter in Afghanistan or to flee to urban Pakistan.
Bolstering their bid to re-establish themselves in the borderlands, the group struck an alliance in July last year with half a dozen small militant factions. Since then, the TTP has stepped up attacks on security forces in northwest Pakistan, raising fears of a revival of their insurgency with support from the Afghan Taliban.
The Afghan Taliban have repeatedly said the group would not allow Afghan soil to be used against any other country or individual.