Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan: PTI still optimist about establishing peace through talks

Failure to condemn terror attacks by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan by the Tehreek-e-Insaf's (PTI) government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is part of the party policy supporting talks instead of taking a confrontational approach, it is learnt.
A senior PTI leader, who requested not to be named, told Business Recorder that the party was aware of the gravity of terror activities in the province but the party believed that any use of strong rhetoric and use of force as supported by the previous government of Awami National Party (ANP) would further intensify the ongoing wave of terrorism.
"We want to resolve the issue through talks, as the PTI has continuously been pressing for dialogue with the Taliban as this the only option if we want to extricate ourselves from the US war on terror," he added. The PTI in its manifesto had pledged to extricate the country from the US-led war on terror, which the party believed is the main cause of terrorism in the country. In pursuance of its party policy, Chief Minister Pervez Khattak has stated: "We are ready to give terrorists the respect they want".
"We don't talk of Talibanisation. We say terrorism exists in the province. It is not known to us who is behind this terrorism. We request all those behind terrorism to work for peace in the province. Whatever respect they want, we are ready to give them. We are ready to reintegrate them into society," Khattak stated. Responding to a question about the provincial government failure to rein in terrorists, a senior PTI leader on condition of anonymity said that the PTI wanted to establish peace through dialogue, for which they needed some time as it was a very complicated issue.
He said that the provincial government had prepared a security plan for the province which it would share in the upcoming All Parties' Conference with the objective of carving out a comprehensive national security policy. To a question why is the party hesitating to denounce Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) terror acts, he said that there was a need to find the hidden hands behind these people, adding unless the real perpetrators were not exposed mere condemnation would not work.
Another senior PTI leader, who declined to be named, told Business Recorder over the phone from Peshawar that unless the federal government carved out an effective anti-terror policy, the provincial government would have to bear the brunt as it was unable to deal with the menace of terrorism alone. "We accept that we'd been informed there would be an attack but the police could not effectively deal with the militants who were fully equipped with sophisticated rocket grenade propellers and machine guns while our police had only century-old rifles, as the previous government did nothing to build capacity of the law enforcement agencies", he stated.
The PTI government has come under increasing criticism for not only failing to take mitigating steps to prevent the attack on D I Khan central jail three days after intelligence was provided of the imminence of such an attack but also of being unaware that the intelligence of the attack was shared as indicated by Chief Minister KPK lamenting lack of intelligence for the attack. Subsequently, Imran Khan stated that the KPK government would create a provincial intelligence service clearly not being cognisant of the well-known fact that provincial intelligence agency namely Special Branch is operating in KPK as in other provinces.
The ANP ministers are being fondly remembered by the general public a mere two months after the PTI was swept to power and the ANP could not secure more than four seats because the party was rhetorically so much more condemnatory of the TTP attacks than the PTI. Mian Iftikhar Hussain, former provincial minister for information and broadcasting and former spokesman of the ANP government, continues to visit scenes of terror attacks and victims families which, is being well regarded by the common people, an anecdotal survey revealed.