Uniting for Pakistan: Sirajul Haq Speaks Out

Tribal Representatives Endorse Peace Process with Pak Taliban

“Love of Pakistan is integral to the fighters in the mountains”

LAHORE, May 1: Ameer, Jamaat e Islami, Pakistan, Sirajul Haq, has said that the key to peace lies with Islamabad and the day when the government decided to finish the game, every issue would be solved.

He was addressing a grand Peace Jirga organized by the JI tribal areas, held at Nishtar Hall, Peshawar, on Thursday. It was attended by more than one thousand tribal elders drawn from all the tribal agencies. Chairman Taliban negotiation committee Maulana Samiul Haq, and committee members Prof. Muhammad Ibrahim Khan,  Maulana Yusuf Shah and other JI leaders also addressed.

A joint declaration unanimously adopted by the Jirga through show of hand, fully supported the dialogue process initiated by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with the Taliban for restoration of peace and stability in the light of the APC decision. The Jirga urged all the stake holders, the government, the armed forces and the Taliban to extend ceasefire. It also demanded wide ranging constitutional, legal, political reforms educational and economic reforms so as to remove the sense of deprivation of the tribal people.

Sirajul Haq impressed upon the rulers in Islamabad to heed to the tribal peoples cries for peace, and warned that otherwise they would stage a long march to Islamabad to make themselves heard by the rulers.

He said that winning the confidence of the tribal people was more important for Pakistan’s defense than the nuclear bomb. The tribal people were unpaid defenders of the country but today they were being condemned as terrorists, he added. He said the violators of the constitution were residing in Islamabad and not in tribal areas. Those wearing turbans and supporting beards are not terrorists, but the biggest terrorist is the US, he remarked.

He said no one in the tribal areas had ever set the national flag on fire, and the schools in tribal areas began with the national anthem, he added.  

The JI Ameer said that those bombing the tribal areas should tell the nation if they had ever established any college, university or a hospital in the tribal areas.

Sirajul Haq said it was unfortunate that when the rulers keen to declare India as the Most Favorite nation were asked to extinguish the war flames, they instead poured kerosene oil to intensify the war.   He said that ten million tribal people had voted for dialogue because they had been crushed in the war between the armed forces and the Taliban.

The JI Ameer said that some people considered the FCR as the panacea for all ills. And remarked that if the FCR was so good, let it be enforced in Islamabad which was suffering from several diseases.
Addressing the Jirga, Maulana Samiul Haq said that ever since the talks had started, drone attacks had stopped. He said had the US been opposed to talks, the US President Obama could not have appreciated the dialogue.

He said that Prime minister Nawaz Sharif and Interior Minister Ch. Nisar Ali Khan were facing a difficult situation and the only solution lay in success of dialogue.

He said the Supreme Court had held that the tribal areas were not within its jurisdiction, and asked why the tribal people were given a discriminatory treatment.

Prof. Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, in his address, said that the government should itself implement the constitution first and grant the tribal people their lawful rights. Next, he said, that the constitution declared Islam the state religion, therefore, “the government should enforce the Islamic order first, and then we would make the Taliban accept the constitution.”

He said that the main parties in the talk were the Taliban and the armed forces while the tribal people and the government were the affected parties. In fact the success and thee failure of talks depended on the armed forces.

Trials and convictions of the JI workers on so called war crimes.

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