Army chief General Raheel Sharif meets Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Islamabad. PHOTO: INP
ISLAMABAD:
Army chief General Raheel Sharif and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday discussed the strategy to take out Mullah Fazlullah, the elusive chief of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), who has claimed credit for some of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Pakistan.
Mullah Fazlullah and his loyalists are believed to be hiding in Afghanistan after they were routed in a massive military operation from Swat in 2009. Fazlullah has also claimed responsibility for the December 16, 2014 bloody rampage at the Army Public School (APS) in Peshawar that killed 154 students and staff.
According to a brief statement issued by the Prime Minister House, Gen Raheel and Premier Nawaz discussed various issues, including implementation of the National Action Plan against terrorism, Operation Zarb-e-Azb and repatriation of temporarily displaced persons (TDP).
Gen Raheel’s meeting with the prime minister came a day after the military claimed that it has arrested one of the main executors of the APS massacre.
The army chief apprised Nawaz of the operations in which the APS attackers and their abettors were arrested or killed in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They reaffirmed their resolve to capture Mullah Fazlullah – dead or alive.
The APS attack has led to improved coordination and cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan against terrorism. Gen Raheel and Premier Nawaz discussed this growing security cooperation between Islamabad and Kabul. The prime minister also apprised the army chief of his telephone contact with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
According to sources, Nawaz and Gen Raheel expressed satisfaction over the exploratory talks between the Afghan Taliban and President Ghani’s administration and vowed to further facilitate this process.
Operation Zarb-e-Azb
Gen Raheel briefed the prime minister on the ongoing military operation in North Waziristan Agency as well as a model for rehabilitation of the TDPs. It was decided that the scope of Operation Zarb-e-Azb would be expanded to other parts of the country.
They also agreed that more funds were needed to implement the Swat model that the top civil-military leadership has agreed to use for rehabilitation of the TDPs from North Waziristan. The prime minister said that his finance minister, Ishaq Dar, was arranging the money for this purpose.
LoC and WB violations
Gen Raheel and Premier Nawaz also discussed recent Indian violations along the Line of Control (LoC) and the Working Boundary. “Both the premier and the army chief agreed to take up repeated ceasefire violations by India with international powers through diplomatic and military sources,” a source said.
The two agreed to project Indian aggression as the main obstacle in the war against terrorism. They concurred that powerful states and their think tanks should be convinced that India was trying to divert Pakistan’s attention from Operation Zarb-e-Azb by stoking unrest in Balochistan and ceasefire violations.
Progress report on NAP
A report – submitted to the prime minister on NAP implementation – claimed that law enforcing agencies have arrested 19,272 suspects in 19,789 countrywide operations since the launch of the National Action Plan against terrorism.
The report, based on information available from December 24, 2014 to February 21, states that the security agencies conducted 11,634 operations in Punjab, 3,003 in Sindh, 3,733 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), 57 in Balochistan, 368 in Islamabad, 891 in AJK, 35 in Gilgit-Baltiststan (G-B) and 68 in Fata.
As many as 580 cases have been registered for spreading hate speech and material. These included 455 in Punjab, 11 in Sindh, 63 in K-P, four in Balochistan, 46 in AJK and one in G-B. The law-enforcing agencies also arrested 518 people and sealed 61 shops on these charges.
According to the report, 5,066 Afghan refugees have been deported including 3,850 from K-P, 686 from Balochistan, one from Islamabad, two from G-B and 527 from Fata, whereas 327,817 refugees have been registered.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 25th, 2015.
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