Speakers at a seminar held to recognise the courageous efforts of Malala Yousufzai for establishment of peace and education equality, demanded an International Noble Peace Award for her and three other fellows injured in the attack.
They also called for effective steps for uprooting terrorism and militancy from Pakhtun soil, as the Taliban militants were against peace and education. The speakers termed that the attempt on the life of Malala Yousufzai as tantamount to an attack on the entire Pakhtun nation. They therefore stressed that all Pakhtun nationalist forces and elected people should show unity to eliminate terrorism and establish sustainable peace in this region.
The seminar was organised by the Citizens Right and Sustainable Development, a non-governmental organisation to mark "Global Day of Action to Support Malala Yousafzai" at the Peshawar Press Club here on Saturday. The day was marked across the world and Pakistan to speak out for Malala Yousufzai in recognition for her struggle for peace and equality of education, as was announced by the United Nations, Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon.
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Minister for Information, Mian Iftikhar Hussain while speaking as chief guest at the seminar eulogised the courageous efforts of Malala Yousufzai, who raised her voice for peace and education. He acknowledged that it was the foremost duty of the elected government and security forces to take proactive steps for purging terrorism and militancy from this region.
"Terrorists do not belong to any creed and religion. They target innocent children and people and religious places to hide their failure, as Taliban militants' network has been dismantled after successful security forces action in Malakand division and elsewhere in the region", he maintained.
Mian Iftikhar said that people were now 80 per cent against the Taliban, as nobody had survived their heinous acts. He further said that the government had tried to bring peace through dialogue, but the Taliban's intentions aren't to establish peace. Reaffirming the commitment of the government, he said that they had carried on proactive action for the elimination of terrorism. However, he said the disbalance of policies at the international and national level existed much earlier.
He stressed that Afghanistan, United States and Pakistan should adopt a joint strategy as frontline states, because peace initiatives at the individual level had remained fruitless in the past. "These three countries should end their differences and announce a new agenda of holding dialogue first," he added.
"Negotiations should be initiated with the real leadership of the Taliban as efforts remained meaningless. Those pursued by the US of holding a dialogue with the Taliban in Qatar were bound to fail.
The Provincial Minister called upon the major stakeholders in the war against terrorism to end their opportunistic definitions of "good and bad Taliban" and form a unified approach to deal with the problem of terrorism. He further said that the battle against militants would go on unless the fanatics are rooted out from every corner of the country. "There should be no separate categories of the Taliban. There would be no Taliban left if there was an agreement against the Taliban amongst the world community," he said.
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