Ex-Pak senator links FATA’s wounds to Pakistan’s support to Taliban

AVA- Published in local Nation media outlet, Khattak has mentioned regarding the recent military operations launched in South Waziristan area as he expressed his concerns regarding the thousands of families displaced since the operations were launched earlier this month.
 
The article titled ‘FATA’s wounds’ mainly focuses on the miseries the residents of the region faces in the past 15 years as he warns that the security circles will continue to use the area as launching pad as long they support the Taliban against the Afghan state.
 
According to Khattak, FATA needs serious change in the misguided policies but the area is hostage to Pakistan’s Afghan Policy.
 
“As long as the country’s security establishment supports Taliban’s war against Afghan state it will continue to use FATA as a launching pad. Put in simple words that means that the decades old war will continue to rage in FATA.  This is a situation which can’t be changed without revisiting Pakistan’s bankrupt Afghan policy designed and executed by the security tsars of the country,” the article states.
 
Raising questions regarding the situation of the FATA in the aftermath of the recent operations and lack of oversight of military operations regarding possible human rights violations, Khattak said  “The peaks of Rajgal mountain in Tirah Valley of Khyber Agency were reported to have been cleared from terrorists connected with the so called Islamic State.”
 
“Actually the IS operating in eastern Afghanistan is mostly manned by former TTP fighters who actually belong to FATA and still have widespread connotations with the networks on Pakistani side of the border,” he noted in his article.
 
According to Khattak, Pakistani mentors of Afghan Taliban are at pains to explain the distinction between TTP and Afghan Taliban. But fact of the matter is that they are two sides of the same coin.
 
“TTP fighters have always pledged allegiance to every new Amir of the Afghan Taliban and without support from their Afghan comrades they would never have been able to maintain their bases on the Afghan side of the border. It’s simply reciprocal. Afghan Taliban also operate from Pakistani side,” he concluded.