Published 01 Jul, 2009 12:00am
LONDON Swat Taliban Chief Mullah Fazlullah has been badly wounded as a result of the ongoing military operation in Swat, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said in an interview with the BBC.
'Most of these so-called leaders hide during the action, however, we will bring them out of their hideouts,' Malik said.
He also said Pakistan wants assistance from its allies as well as the United Nations to help determine where the Taliban are receiving the money and the weapons from.
'These militants who are sitting in South Waziristan and planning terrorist activities from there, I won't call them Taliban, I would call them Zaliman (brutal and pitiless),' Malik said during the interview conducted in London.
Answering a question, Malik said the so-called unity in the extremists which began as the government increased its activities against Baitullah Mehsud was something the government had already anticipated. 'Be it Gul Bahadur or Commander Nazeer, be it Qari Hussain or Baitullah or Hakimullah — they are all branches of the same tree. They all are hardcore terrorists who should be called Zaliman and not Taliban,' Malik said.
'These 'Zaliman' were already present in South Waziristan and have been planning their terrorist activities from there only. Fazlullah was also their colleague. They had made small groups which were later turned into this big group called the Tehrik-i-Taliban,' Rehman Malik told BBC.
Malik said 'when these terrorists saw that Pakistan's enemies were giving them a lot of cash, cars and that there is good money in this, then they also involved Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and Jaish-i-Mohammad in their work. Therefore, what happened as a result was that Al-Qaeda transferred all its terrorist dealings to the Tehrik-i-Taliban.'
When asked if there was a possibility of dialogue with the militants, the Interior Minister said the government has only pursued deals with moderate elements, and the deal in Swat was done only because Sufi Mohammad said he would handle everything there.
Malik expressed the hope that as a result of talks with the new American administration Pakistan will be able to get drone technology and after that 'we will use the technology ourselves.'
