PESHAWAR: A day after Prime Minister Imran Khan told an international news channel his administration was in talks with some factions of the proscribed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the militant network denied any split within its ranks and ruled out cessation of hostilities against the country.
In an interview with TRT World on Friday, Khan said some groups within the militant conglomerate were willing to negotiate for peace and reconciliation, adding that the government was willing to forgive them once they laid down their arms.
The prime minister’s statement, which was widely quoted in local and international media, was followed by reports that a TTP district shura in Waziristan had announced a 20-day cease-fire and its members would not attack the Pakistani security forces.
However, the top leadership of the militant network said it was not looking for a peace agreement with the Pakistani authorities.
“Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has never announced a cease-fire,” its spokesperson, Muhammad Khurasani, said in a statement. “TTP fighters should continue their attacks wherever they are.”
Khurasani described TTP as an “organized movement,” saying there were “no fissures or factions within the group.”
“The movement has a collective policy which no one can deviate from,” he added.
Last month, President Arif Alvi and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi announced the government was willing to offer amnesty to TTP members if they renounced violence and adhered to the country’s constitution.
However, the militant network stated in response it was proud of its “struggle” and was not seeking forgiveness from anyone.
The Pakistani prime minister, who said he did not believe in military solutions, continued to hope during his recent interview that a deal was likely come out of his government’s negotiations with the militant network in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s information minister Chaudhry Fawad Hussain also maintained in a video message that repentant TTP members should get a chance to return to “normal life.”
A security analyst, Saleem Khan, told Arab News the government was also negotiating a peace deal with the Hafiz Gul Bahadur group in North Waziristan, though he added the faction was never a part of the Pakistani Taliban.
He maintained that these talks were complicated since most of the armed groups in the territory were sympathetic to TTP and had pledged allegiance to the leader of the banned group, Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud.
“There are complications in the negotiations because they [the government] are holding talks with Hafiz Gul Bahadur while the main entity is Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan,” he said. “Unless they address the TTP challenge, talks with Hafiz Gul Bahadur will not help. In any case, his faction did not cause too much trouble to the government in the past.”
A conglomerate of several armed factions, TTP was banned soon after its emergence in Pakistan’s tribal areas in 2007 since it started killing Pakistani civilians and security forces.
Inspired by Al Qaeda ideology, it targeted the army headquarters in Rawalpindi and massacred more than 100 children at a school in Peshawar.
The network also took responsibility for shooting Malala Yousafzai, who later became the world’s youngest Nobel laureate, in her hometown, Swat, for advocating girls’ education.