Pakistan’s interior minister announced today that the military will stop launching airstrikes against the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan. The move comes one day after the Taliban said it would halt attacks for one month. From AFP:
“After the positive announcement yesterday by the Taliban, the government has decided to suspend the air strikes which were continuing for the past few days,” Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said in a statement Sunday.
The statement added that “the government and armed forces of Pakistan, however, reserve the right for a befitting response to any act of violence (by the Taliban).”
The government announcement came after the military killed five “militants” in an airstrike in Khyber.
Keep in mind that the newly-formed Ahrar-ul-Hind said it wouldn’t adhere to a ceasefire. And it is unlikely that the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and other jihadist groups currently entrenched in the tribal areas, will abide by any agreement with the government.
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1 Comment
I’m not sure if you saw this, Bill, but the TTP denied even hearing of Ahrar-ul-Hind yesterday.
http://www.dawn.com/news/1091183/ttp-govt-committees-meeting-in-akora-khattak
“Talking about the Ahrarul Hind, the group that claimed responsibility of the recent attack in an Islamabad court, he [Maulana Samiul Haq] said that he had never heard the organisation’s name before and the Taliban were also unaware of the outfit.”
Seems like a classic case of plausible deniability to me.