Talal Chaudhry questions PTI leadership’s ‘soft attitude’ towards Afghanistan, terrorists

Information Minister Attaullah Tarar on Monday accused the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) government of facilitating terrorists for political and financial interests.

Speaking during a press conference in Islamabad alongside Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry, Tarar urged the K-P government to “say these words with your mouth that we will eliminate terrorists from Pakistan and from K-P.” He added, “You facilitate terrorists because of your political and financial interests.”

During the press conference, held regarding the terrorist attack on the checkpost in Dera Ismail Khan, Tarar claimed that the K-P government “didn’t care” that people were dying because the government’s “politics are dear to them.” Tarar added, “The money that they are making in K-P from illegal mining and through contracts, that’s dear to them.”

He also argued that if the provincial government cared, “they would have sat in Kohat to hold a meeting on law and order; they would have called a meeting of the whole of DI Khan on law and order.”

Tarar claimed, further, that the “current leadership of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has bad intentions and a bad nature.” He added, “I stand by my position that the PTI leadership in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is the “B” team of the banned TTP.”

Saying that K-P was “burning in the fire of terrorism,” Tarar accused the province’s leadership of having placed it’s entire focus “on getting one prisoner released from jail.” The information minister also accused K-P CM Sohail Afridi for failing administratively and politically as well, adding that “devastation and ruin” had spread across K-P and that the “provincial government itself spread terrorism and did not counter it.” 

Discussing Balochistan, the information minister said the province’s government “is taking effective measures to deal with terrorism in the province,” adding that Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti “is a brave and capable chief minister.” Drawing a comparison between the two terrorism-riddled provinces, Tarar said Bugti “should be saluted,” and that the chief minister was “using all resources to confront terrorism.” On the other hand, Tarar claimed that the K-P government was “spending funds on sit-ins instead of the police,” and that it wanted to “make the police the political wing of the PTI.”

Earlier in the press conference, Chaudhry accused the leadership of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) of maintaining a “soft attitude” towards Afghanistan, questioning why the K-P provincial government didn’t condemn attacks from the neighbouring country or its proxies.

Chaudhry, during a press conference alongside Information Minister Attaullah Tarar regarding the terrorist attack on the checkpost in Dera Ismail Khan, questioned, “Why do you have a soft attitude towards Afghanistan? Why, deliberately, do you maintain such an ambiguous attitude towards Afghanistan that who the real enemy is, or from where all these proxies are operating, you do not condemn them or say their name publicly?”

According to Chaudhry, a political leadership maintained three things in the war against terrorism – leadership, resources, and power. He argued that K-P’s political leadership “for the past 14 years, has not supplied leadership to its security forces,” adding that the provincial government “has not stood united behind its security forces and have deliberately maintained a soft attitude for the terrorists, and has created space for them in society.”

The minister noted further that “this was cowardice, this was the plan.”

He also alleged that “if Pakistan is burning in terrorism, it is because of K-P’s incompetent leadership, because of their deliberately maintaining such an attitude, that it is burning.”

Read: Talal hopes ‘better sense’ will prevail

Further, Chaudhry said investigators had examined an image of one of the suspected attackers and claimed that Pakistan’s identification databases had no record matching him. Subsequently, he added, investigators used open-source intelligence and found an image showing the same person at Kabul’s Pakhtunistan Square, which he presented as evidence of an Afghan connection.

“This is not the first incident,” Chaudhry said. “In Pakistan, we have been saying for a long time that the terrorist incidents that are happening, most of the groups and organisations come from Afghanistan,” he added.

The minister claimed that Afghan nationals accounted for about 70% of those involved in these terrorist activities and operations over the past two-and-a-half to three years.

Arguing that Pakistan had “made every effort” through international forums, bilateral contacts, and through friendly countries regarding Afghanistan, he noted that “this neighbour had continued this work.” 

“This is Afghanistan’s true face,” Chaudhry said.

Referring to civilians killed in the DI Khan attack and the subsequent targeting of rescue workers, he asked: “Is this Jihad?” According to the minister, “even enemies who have some principles” don’t conduct such attacks or engage in such behaviour. The attacks are “to destabilise us,” Chaudhry said, alleging that “whenever Pakistan takes-off, moves forward, such attacks also increase.”

The minister added, “Afghanistan works as a super-proxy.”

Further, he alleged that the province had failed to adequately equip its Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) with bulletproof jackets, cars, training, forensic labs or a Safe City network. “Tell me why you did not provide resources,” he said.

Chaudhry also criticised changes to the Police Act, saying the provincial government weakened the force’s institutional authority. The minister also argued that K-P received 1% of the NFC which amounts to around Rs800 billion, but questioned why that amount was not used to provide resources to the people of K-P. “Even today, your counter-terrorism forces live in rented homes; they don’t have resources to this day,” he said.

He also rejected complaints that the federal government had excluded the K-P leadership from counter-terrorism policymaking, saying provincial representatives had failed to attend national security and counter-terrorism meetings despite being invited to come.

“If you don’t come to the sessions, if you don’t take interest, and if you can’t even condemn with your own mouth when our kids and civilians are being martyred, can’t take the enemy’s name, what war will you even fight?” Chaudhry asked.