DERA ISMAIL KHAN: The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) declined on Friday to provide security to a Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf peace march to Kotkai town of South Waziristan and declared that PTI Chairman Imran Khan was a westernised and secular man.
TTP spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan said in a statement that the TTP was an ideological organisation based on fundamentals of Islam and performed all activities in accordance with the teachings of Islam.
“Imran Khan is a liberal and secular person and so is his party. Therefore, we deny all baseless statements that we have offered to provide security for his so-called peace rally,” the spokesman said.
He said the lives of ‘Mujahideen’ were too valuable to protect a westernised and secular man.
Local and foreign media had quoted unnamed sources as saying that Taliban had offered to provide security to the rally.
Enthusiastic workers of the PTI are making extensive arrangements for the peace march which is expected to arrive in the town on Saturday night.
The main bazaar, streets and adjoining localities have been decorated with the PTI’s tri-colour flags and banners.
The TTP spokesman said Pakistani politicians were of two types—those who are in power like the PPP, MQM and ANP, were openly hostile to Islam and Mujahideen and the other category was of those who were not yet in power, like the PML-N and PTI, but they also were secular and slaves of the West.
“Although we consider Imran Khan a secular and liberal person as he himself proudly claims. So being an ideological Islamic organisation the TTP does not need any sympathy from him (Imran),” said the spokesman.
He said the TTP would not disclose its strategy and its ‘military’ tactics.He said Imran Khan was arranging the so-called peace march only to improve his political stature and he had no sympathy for the victims of drones.
Meanwhile, Mujahideen Jaishul Khilafa, a hitherto unknown group, has declared Imran Khan an agent of the US, Israel and Britain and warned people against taking part in the march.
A pamphlet distributed by the group in Tank on Friday said the march planned by Imran Khan against drone strikes in South Waziristan was a farce.
In fact, he was strengthening Zionists and Christians through tribal people in the name of drone attacks.
But PTI leader and chief organiser of the march, Dost Mohammad Mehsud, claimed that the pamphlet had been distributed by Khasaddar Force deployed in Tank.
He told Dawn on phone that local people had seen Khasaddar personnel distributing the pamphlets in the town.
He, however, refused to comment on the TTP spokesman’s statement and insisted that PTI workers would provide security to the march.
Meanwhile, a senior official of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Home and Tribal Affairs Department said in Peshawar that foreigners taking part in the rally would not be allowed to enter the province.