PESHAWAR: The banned Pakistani Taliban militant group has rejected Pakistan’s offer for amnesty unless the government agreed to impose Shariah law in the country.
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, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), crossing over from Afghanistan and launching lethal attacks on its territory.
Thousands of Pakistanis have been killed in violence launched by the TTP in the last two decades. The group has accepted responsibility for several high profile attacks in Pakistan, including an attack on an army-run school in Peshawar in which 134 children were killed in 2014 and an assassination attempt on activist and now Nobel prize winner Malala Yousafzai.
Two senior Pakistani officials — the foreign minister and the president — last week announced that the government could pardon TTP members if they laid down arms, abandoned the group’s ideology and adhered to the country’s constitution.
“Pardon is usually offered to those who commit crimes, but we are quite proud of our struggle,” the TTP said in its statement on Friday. “We can offer conditional amnesty to our enemy if they promise to implement Shariah in the country.”
Adnan Bhittani, a senior security analyst based in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told Arab News the recent release of TTP fighters from Afghan prisons after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan had emboldened the armed faction to increase its attacks in Pakistan.
“TTP has up to 6,000 fighters who can create mayhem in different parts of Pakistan,” he said.
The Afghan Taliban has repeatedly assured Pakistan it will not allow its territory to be used by militants to attack any nation.
Reacting to the development, senior opposition leader, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, criticized the government’s “policy of appeasement” in a Twitter post, saying it would come to haunt the country in the future.
The unilateral decision to offer amnesty to terrorist groups within Pakistan is an insult to the thousands of victims of terrorism. Imran’s policy of appeasement to religious fascism within Pakistan as well as on our eastern & western borders will haunt us in-times to come.
— BilawalBhuttoZardari (@BBhuttoZardari) September 17, 2021
So far, there has been no response from the Pakistan government to the TTP’s statement.
