JI and the TTP

Express Tribune -- (coming out soon in the market)

We don’t have to jog our memory all that much to remember that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the man believed to be the operational planner of the 9/11 attacks, was arrested by Pakistani intelligence agents from the home of a man and a woman believed to be members of the Jamaat-e-Islami. While the English press raised this issue initially it died down, not least because many Pakistanis see Khalid Sheikh Mohammad as a hero rather than a terrorist. However, Tuesday’s revelation by the military commander leading the fight against the TTP in Bajaur that the house of former JI MNA Sahibzada Haroonur Rasheed was the operational headquarters of the Taliban in the agency comes across as conclusive proof that the JI is much closer to the TTP than it would like most Pakistanis, or indeed the rest of the world, to believe. This perhaps explains why the party has never criticized the TTP for all its heinous and dastardly actions inside the country in which thousands of innocent civilians have died and why it has not said a word against suicide attacks. The JI needs to be asked to explain its association with the TTP and if proven an accomplice then appropriate measures should be taken against it, the least of which should be its public naming as an abettor of the country’s most wanted terrorist network.

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