A Pakistani minister on Sunday said that the former ISI chief Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed wanted to bring the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) family members back to the country, but his plan “backfired.”
The Federal Human Rights Minister Riaz Pirzada made this assertion on a Dawn News programme.
Pirzada claimed that an in-camera briefing was held in which Army generals proposed to “resettle” TTP members in Pakistan.
“At that time, Gen Faiz had suggested that they [TTP] should be brought into the mainstream but it backfired,” the minister was quoted as saying by the Dawn newspaper.
“However, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Shehbaz Sharif talked on it … they said that a number of popular leaders were martyred by TTP, including Benazir Bhutto sahiba,” he added.
Interestingly, Pirzada made these comments a day after Shireen Mazari, former human rights minister in the erstwhile Imran Khan government, also claimed that Pakistan ex-Army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa wanted to “resettle” family members of TTP in the country.
Mazari asserted that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party demanded that first, a consensus should be reached and then a dialogue with the TTP should be initiated.
The flurry of claims and counterclaims from Pakistan’s politicians come at a time when there has been a substantial increase in terror activities across the country, with an attack on the Karachi police chief’s office on Friday night being the latest incident.
Khan’s PTI and the incumbent federal government headed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif have been indulging in a blame game over the precarious security situation in Pakistan.
The Sharif government insisted that Khan’s government’s plans to enter into a dialogue with the TTP militants was “faulty” and was “never endorsed” by the Parliament, the Dawn report said.
On January 30, a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up during the afternoon prayers in a mosque in Peshawar, killing 101 people and injuring more than 200 others.
During the Apex Committee meeting held earlier this month, Pakistan’s civil and military leadership decided to seek Afghan Taliban chief Haibuttallah Akhundzada’s intervention to control the TTP.
In November last year, the TTP called off an indefinite ceasefire agreed with the government in June 2022 and ordered its militants to carry out attacks on the security forces.
Pakistan hoped that the Afghan Taliban after coming to power would stop the use of their soil against Pakistan by expelling the TTP operatives, but they have apparently refused to do so at the cost of straining ties with Islamabad.
The TTP, set up as an umbrella group of several militant outfits in 2007, called off a ceasefire with the federal government and ordered its militants to stage terrorist attacks across the country.
The group, which is believed to be close to Al-Qaeda, has been blamed for several deadly attacks across Pakistan, including an attack on army headquarters in 2009, assaults on military bases, and the 2008 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.
In 2014, the Pakistani Taliban stormed the Army Public School in the north-western city of Peshawar, killing at least 150 people, including 131 students.