Taliban ‘ready for peace with Islamabad’

Gretchen Peters, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: June 22. 2008 7:47PM UAE / June 22. 2008 3:47PM GMT

ISLAMABAD // Accusing the United States of trying to derail peace talks with the Pakistani government, the spokesman for the Taliban movement in Pakistan says his group wants “peace and dialogue” with Islamabad.

“There was a stage when it was good to fight the Pakistani government,” said Maulvi Umar in an exclusive interview with The National. “But now we believe the new government has learnt a lesson from the misguided policies of Pervez Musharraf and they will be sincere in their negotiations.”

Surrounded by Kalashnikov-toting bodyguards at a militant hideout in restive Bajaur Agency, Umar said US missile strikes in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas meant he was almost constantly on the run.

He blamed the Nato-led coalition in Afghanistan – and the US military in particular – for trying to disrupt the peace process.

“Just at the moment that tribal leaders in Bajaur were beginning to have peace talks, the Americans launched a missile strike here,” he said, apparently referring to an attack in May when at least 14 people were reported killed, including some foreign militants.

He said that despite the air strikes, the Pakistani Taliban, known by its Urdu-language abbreviation TTP, was growing stronger. “The mujahideen are in huge numbers – so much they cannot be counted,” Umar said. “We can say a new movement has come into being.”

The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan was formed in December, when leaders from more than a half-dozen Pakistani militant groups agreed to join forces. They elected Baitullah Mehsud, a commander based in South Waziristan, as their leader.

Pakistan’s security services blame Mehsud for a string of terrorist attacks in Pakistan, including the assassination in December of Benazir Bhutto while she was campaigning for general elections on a platform to wipe out extremism.

Umar, however, rejected the charge. “We had no political rivalry with Benazir, and she was not even in power. I deny that Baitullah Mehsud had anything to do with it.”

Umar said the TTP was allied with such foreign militant groups as al Qa’eda and was expanding its area of operations outside of the tribal belt into so-called “settled districts” of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. He insisted the group tried to avoid civilian casualties in their attacks.

Militant violence in 2007 killed 422 army and police personnel, and 220 civilians, according to government statistics. The violence turned many Pakistanis against al Qa’eda and the Taliban.

The Washington-based research group Terror Free Tomorrow polled Pakistanis in August and found that almost half had a favourable opinion of Osama bin Laden. Six months later, a second survey was conducted, recording that bin Laden’s popularity plummeted to 24 per cent.

Umar indicated the TTP was sensitive to this issue, stressing that Nato “infidel forces” across the border in Afghanistan and the Pakistan military were the targets of their violence.

“We don’t intend to harm the Pakistani people or any civilian institution. We always go after military targets because it is the Pakistan military that attacks us,” he said. “We are unhappy when civilians get killed, but our attacks will continue until the time the excesses against us end.”

The Taliban spokesman appeared to differentiate between the coalition government elected in February in Islamabad and the Pakistani military. The Islamabad government, headed by the Pakistan People’s Party, has signed controversial peace deals with militants and tribal leaders in the Swat Valley and in South Waziristan to try to reduce violence.

The Afghan government and the Nato-led coalition in Afghanistan has blamed those peace deals for a 50 per cent spike in attacks across the border. Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, last week threatened to send troops into the tribal areas to kill Mehsud and other militant commanders.

Umar said the Taliban remained “sincere” in its talks with the Pakistan government, but warned that violence would resume in Pakistan if and when Islamabad resumed attacking their camps.

“Whenever there is injustice against us, wherever they kill our colleagues – in Waziristan or Swat or anywhere else – we will have to take revenge and we will continue to take revenge,” he said.

He said the TTP’s real enemy was the US government and the Nato alliance and that once the foreign fighters left Afghanistan, the “mujahideen would return to their homes”. They had no plans to take over Pakistan, he said.

Umar said the TTP had a deep reservoir of fighters ready and eager to give their lives for the cause.

“The suicide bombers are ready to sacrifice themselves and I want to say that there are so many who want to die that we can’t accommodate all of them,” he said. “We developed these mujahideen in response to American injustice around the world … This is a power we have against the atomic weapons and the infidel world and by the grace of Allah we have a lot of them.”

* Gretchen Peters reported from Islamabad and Rahmetullah Khan from Bajaur.

gpeters@thenational.ae