PESHAWAR: Awami National Party (ANP) provincial Aimal Wali Khan on Saturday said intelligence agencies and police had told him to restrict movement over threats to his life.

Mr Aimal told a presser at Wali Bagh in Charsadda district that the intelligence agencies intercepted phone calls about those threats.

“The police and intelligence agencies have communicated an alert about a possible militant attack to me. They have intercepted phone calls revealing that Charsadda-based militants have returned from Afghanistan for the attack,” he said.

The ANP leader said he had been told to “take care.”

He said he believed that he would be the first target of a militant attack in Charsadda.

Mr Aimal said security situation in the region didn’t deteriorate suddenly and that he informed Americans that the region suffered due to its geographical location.

“I told a US diplomat in a recent meeting that the Pakhtun soil was mercilessly used during the games played by super powers,” he said.

The ANP leader said he had been insisting for a long time that the ‘change’ at the helm in Afghanistan would affect Pakistan in general and KP in particular.

He said nobody knew about the talks between the government and the banned militant outfit Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan.

Mr Aimal wondered who gave the “constitutional authority” to a corps commander to to hold dialogue with the TTPand said it was parliament’s mandate to do so.

Also in the day, a statement issued by the ANP’s central office in Peshawar, Bacha Khan Markaz, quoted the ANP provincial president as claiming that militants were freed and forgiven by authorities only after jirgas were held.

“The corps commander, who held dialogue, was backed by former prime minister Imran Khan and the PTI government,” Mr Aimal said in the statement.

The ANP leader warned that the military establishment and authorities would be responsible if the security situation deteriorated in the province.

He said Pakistan, the US and the Taliban were on the same page regarding militancy.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2022