Gen Athar Abbas: 'Pakistan will not allow militants to carry out attacks on the people and check posts'
Nine brave sons of the nation were martyred on Monday following an ambush by militants on the outskirts of Peshawar.
“It was an ambush in the afternoon. It continued for two to three hours, and there have been casualties in the ambush. There have been killings of the terrorists as well,” military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told AFP.
He was unable to give a casualty count, but military and political officials in the northwest said nine paramilitary troops were killed.”
Interior Minister Rehman Malik has said that peace talks will only be held with militants if they lay down their arms first. This is the correct response. If we allow militants to kill our soldiers and then invite them for chai samosa, we will enter any peace talks from a position of weakness.
It is said that best defence is offence, and before any peace talks are negotiated with Taliban insurgents, we must approach from a position of strength. That means that we need to take the fight to the militants and deal them a swift and unforgettable defeat that will leave their ears ringing for the foreseeable future.
We should remember the outcome of our last attempt to negotiate peace agreements with Taliban militants. In 2009, we agreed to concessions expanding Shariat in frontier region according to the demands of Tehrik-Nifaz-i-Shariat Mohammed (TNSM) leader Sufi Mohammed and the militants even then refused to lay down their weapons. Soon after, despite all the concessions made, the Taliban took a ‘Do More’ mantra and attacked again.
The attack occurred despite Pakistan making further concessions to the Taliban by establishing an Islamic appeal court. Officials had insisted that by carrying out its part of the agreement, the government could gain more support from the public to take action against the Taliban if the militants violate the pact.
Taliban militants have said before that any peace deal is only a strategic step in their greater goal of taking over the government and imposing Taliban rule, turning Pakistan into another Afghanistan.
“From the very beginning, I have viewed democracy as a system imposed on us by the infidels. Islam does not allow democracy or elections,” he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur in an interview held a few days before the government accepted his demand of enforcing sharia in the region. “Had the government accepted our demands in 1994, we would have not seen the violence we are seeing today,” he added. Sufi Muhammad’s son-in-law, Mullah Fazlullah, has fostered the violence in the name of Islam.
“I believe the Taliban government formed a complete Islamic state, which was an ideal example for other Muslim countries. Had this government remained intact, it could have led to the establishment of similar Islamic governments in many other countries,” he said.
Not only militant leaders but officers from India, America, and Afghan security forces are watching closely how we react to militant attacks. If we allow this bunch of militants to violate our sovereignty, to act without the fear of severe consequences, if we allow them to dictate to us a ‘Do More’ mantra then what fear will greater powers like India and America have of attacking us? They will see that we are weak when threatened by lashkars with rocket launchers and kalashnikovs and believe that our claims of military strength are a bluff. It will be us who follows the Soviet Union in falling to the militants, while the Indians and the Americans laugh.
We must not allow this humiliation to come upon us. These Taliban militants are anti-Pakistan and must be crushed. Then the Americans will see that we are able to defeat the very militants who have kept them mired in a quagmire since 10 years and they will know that Pakistan is not a country to be toyed with. Then there will be not more talk of ground invasions by the Americans, but a return to strategic dialogue that respects Pakistan’s role in the region.
