The party, which at the time was in power in what was then known as the North-West Frontier Province (or KP), was likewise outspoken in its support of the military operations that ultimately drove the militants from the region.
It is in the nature of the beast for people committed to a life of violence to continue using violent rhetoric if it benefits them. In a statement released on Thursday, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, a banned organisation with which the government has been in intermittent peace talks since last year, warned “secular” and nationalist groups to quit making accusations against them.
“These groups are the enemies of Islam and this country,” it proclaimed. It “recommended” people to avoid conflict while maintaining that it did not want to disagree with any particular religious or political organisation. However, it did not clearly name any one group as being the “offending” one. More ominously, it continued, “These parties lost in the past as a result of their bad policies.”
Progressive parties don’t need a reminder of those tragic years when the TTP brutally targeted them; many of their leaders and supporters perished in the attacks. The Awami National Party, which had contested Mullah Fazlullah’s Swat TTP chapter’s growing dominance in the Malakand Division, was one of those singled out.
The party, which at the time was in power in what was then known as the North-West Frontier Province (or KP), was likewise outspoken in its support of the military operations that ultimately drove the militants from the region. Leaders of the ANP Bashir Bilour, a prominent minister in the previous KP administration, and his son Haroon Bilour both died in suicide assaults that the TTP claimed responsibility for a few years apart.
The umbrella group attacked the secular ANP, MQM, and PPP violently in the first half of 2013, crippling their election campaigns as a result. By this time, they were well-established in the tribal areas. The hard-line group’s range of savagery was already clear when it controlled the Swat Valley few years ago, turning town squares into locations for public beheadings and outlawing girls’ education.
There is no era too horrible to remember. The demonstrations against the rumoured return of the heavily armed and menacing fighters from the Swat chapter across KP, including in Swat and Lower Dir, are proof that the situation has changed. The citizenry is no longer prepared to submit in the name of yet another “peace accord” with militants that achieves nothing to quell the latter but permits them to reassemble and subjugate the populace.
According to some commentators, the TTP’s statement should be interpreted in light of the possibility that the group’s call for resistance caught them off guard. The response, however, also seems to indicate that the state has been sufficiently empowered to once again serve as the judge and jury in determining who is anti-state and anti-religion as a result of its negotiations with the violent group. How long before it resumes its function as the executioner?
