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Pakistan's home-grown monster Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is haunting Islamabad as it called off a shaky ceasefire with the government and ordered fighters to stage attacks across the country.
According to a TTP statement, they called off the ceasefire agreed with the government in June, reported Dawn. "As military operations are ongoing against mujahideen in different areas [...] so it is imperative for you to carry out attacks wherever you can in the entire country," said the statement. TTP has killed an estimated 83,000; mostly innocent people since 2006, pushed them out of their homes and stalled development that they oppose anyway to retain their hold, reported International Forum for Rights and Security (IFFRAS). In Pakistan, the ongoing political game involving the political class, the military and the judiciary, has ignored the public suffering on numerous counts. On top of the murky heap is violence by the country's largest and most violent militant group TTP. The TTP, a Pakistani offshoot and close ally of the Afghan Taliban, is listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations. According to UN estimates, it has between 4,000 to 6,500 fighters in Afghanistan. Its spread is beyond the tribal belt, to Pakistani cities. Armed terrorists on November 16 ambushed a police patrol in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province killing all six policemen. Local officials told Al Jazeera the incident took place when the police vehicle was fired upon in the city of Lakki Marwat, about 200 km (125 miles) from the provincial capital of Peshawar. In another incident, two soldiers were killed in a shootout with terrorists in the Hilal Khel area in Bajaur. Such clashes are routine in the difficult-to-govern terrain that borders Afghanistan, where TTP finds refuge, reported IFFRAS. The failure of the federal and provincial governments to curb militancy -while some of their elements nurture them - has unsettled the people's lives. Protests of a unique kind have gained ground with people who want peace from TTP's depredations. The government's response, however, has been to abduct and jail the protestors and subject them to torture. People accuse the government of having failed to curb the TTP cadres, even being in cahoots with them, reported IFFRAS. Foreign observers confirm this collusion between the terrorists and the government, both the military and the political class. TTP fighters were largely routed into neighbouring Afghanistan, but Islamabad claims the Taliban in Kabul are now giving the TTP a foothold to stage assaults across the border. Moreover, Pakistan no longer pleads for the Kabul regime's recognition by the world community. Indeed, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari warned (on November 21, 2022) that the world was getting tired of Kabul's ill-treatment of Afghan women and the side-stepping aspirations of ethnic and religious minorities. For one, it has noted the flight of Sikhs to India's safety, reported IFFRAS. Zardari urged the Islamist rulers in Kabul to fulfil their pledges to Afghans and the world at large that they would fight international terrorism and fulfil the human rights of all Afghans, including giving women access to education. "The world is running out of patience [with the Taliban]." Echoing Zardari's observations, it is possible to say the world is also running out of patience with Pakistan's failure to curb terrorism and warn that it should not lull into inaction on terror funding, now that it is off the grey list of Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Like it had happened before, the FATF and global sanctions can always return, reported IFFRAS. (ANI)
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