The Pakistani government said Thursday that the decision by Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to break a ceasefire and resume carrying out attacks in the country should be a cause for concern among the Afghan Taliban, which had been playing a mediating role in talks between Islamabad and the armed group to try to reach a peace deal.
«The TTP enjoys all kinds of facilities in Afghanistan,» said Pakistani Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah, a day after the extremist group claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in the city of Quetta on a police vehicle carrying officers to protect a polio vaccination campaign that killed four people.
Thus, he stressed that the Taliban promised after regaining power that they would not allow their territory to be used to attack other countries or to carry out attacks and argued that «if they fulfill it, it will not only benefit Pakistan, but also themselves». «The TTP is present there and is carrying out terrorist activities there. Their territory is being used (to carry out terrorist acts), contrary to their claims,» he has criticized.
He also stressed that the situation «is alarming», although he ruled out that it could «get out of control» or that «any group could be out of reach (of the security forces)», according to the Pakistani newspaper ‘Dawn’.
The TTP, which differs from the Afghan Taliban in organizational matters but follows the same rigorist interpretation of Sunni Islam, brings together more than a dozen Islamist militant groups operating in Pakistan, where they have killed some 70,000 people in two decades of violence.
