File photo of PTI chief Imran Khan
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Tuesday lamented that the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa police have “no chance” against militants of the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), as they are better equipped than the provincial security forces.
“Terrorists are equipped with modern weapons that the U.S. left behind,” he said while addressing via video-link a seminar organized on terrorism by the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government. “Rangers are still deployed in Karachi,” he continued on the deployment to the paramilitary force in Sindh, stressing that when his party had come into power in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in 2013, hundreds of police officials had lost their lives to terrorism. “They were in a position where they were more scared of protecting their own lives than performing their duties,” he added.
“I had warned that all of Pakistan would suffer if terrorism started in KP. However, funds were not given to us,” he said, alleging that lack of funding was to blame for the current bout of unrest. “I had already said that when you can’t control your economy, you cannot control terrorism,” he said, reiterating his desire for “peace talks” while maintaining that a military operation was not the solution and should be reserved as an option of last resort.
Accusing the ruling coalition of not focusing on talks with the Taliban government in Afghanistan, he claimed Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s first foreign trip should have been to the neighboring state. “We had a golden opportunity when America left Afghanistan; we tried to better our ties with the Ashraf Ghani government as best as we could and decided not to intervene in Afghan affairs,” he said, adding that the former Kabul government had been “pro-India” and had facilitated terrorism in Pakistan.
However, he claimed, once the Taliban took over the situation had improved and the new rulers’ “trust” in the Pakistani government could be gauged from the number of foreigners Islamabad helped evacuate from Kabul. Slamming the incumbent government for issuing statements hinting at airstrikes within Afghanistan, he warned that the situation would further deteriorate if Kabul stopped its cooperation.
“If we cannot continue good relations with Afghanistan, the new war on terror will become a curse for us. I said ‘absolutely not’ [to a journalist asking about U.S. bases in Pakistan] because I wanted to save Pakistanis. When drone attacks were allowed, Pakistanis were killed in retaliation,” he said, regretting that part of the problem was Pakistan’s policies, as it had justified “jihad” under military dictator Ziaul Haq before declaring it “terrorism” under dictator Pervez Musharraf. “The mujahideen then entered Pakistan and alleged that Islamabad was the collaborator and imposed a war on us,” he claimed.
Resettlement of militants
The ousted prime minister also verified reports that his government had planned to relocate fighters of the banned TTP from Afghanistan to the erstwhile tribal areas of Pakistan, but this had been prevented due to a lack of funds. Claiming that his government had planned to relocate at least 5,000 TTP fighters and their families—roughly 35,000 people—he claimed Sindh and Balochistan had refused to give 3 percent of their share from the National Finance Commission (NFC) for the uplift of merged districts. The federal government also halted its cooperation after the PTI’s ouster, he claimed, adding that the funding would have been used to initiate uplift projects that would have dulled the narrative of an “anti-merger” group.
During his speech, the PTI chief also reiterated his criticism of the ruling coalition, claiming its leadership was more concerned with ending corruption cases against them than the economy and terrorism.
Khan was ousted as prime minister through a vote of no-confidence in April. Dubbed ‘Taliban Khan’ for his apparent support of the TTP and the Taliban, he had infamously declared that the “shackles of slavery” had been broken through the exit of the U.S. from the region, triggering outrage and criticism.
Pakistan is currently in the midst of a resurgence of terrorism, provoked by the TTP declaring war on security forces after ending a ceasefire it had inked in 2021. Last month, the National Security Committee declared that all terrorists are “enemies of Pakistan” and vowed to eradicate them if they did not submit to the supremacy of the Constitution. Government officials have also hinted that the time for peace talks has ended, stressing that accepting the Constitution is a prerequisite for any future attempts at peace.