Pak denies Afghan media claim that it carried air strikes against TTP

Islamabad [Pakistan], January 9 (ANI): Pakistan has denied an Afghan media report that alleged that Pakistan forces conducted air strikes on the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leaders in Afghanistan's Nangahar province.
Meanwhile, a Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies (PIPS) claimed there were 262 terror attacks during the past year launched by the TTP and other Islamist militant groups active on the Afghan -Pakistan border, Asian Lite International reported.
The PIPS report claimed that 419 Pakistanis were killed and 734 injured in these terror attacks.
Further, Pakistan's government recently vowed to crack down on terrorism without discrimination. To which the TTP replied by threatening to attack two of the leading political parties of Pakistan, according to the Asian Lite International (ALI) report.
The same ALI report quoted a former special advisor to Prime Minister Imran Khan Raoof Hasan, "The new formulation of TTP/ Tehreek-e-Taliban Afghanistan (TTA), brings the Afghan Taliban together with their Pakistani ideological brothers TTP. Operations to tame the TTP were only partly successful because the bulk of their operatives escaped across the border where they have been working since in filial bondage with the Afghan Taliban."
The Asian Lite International report cited a Dawn report by Pervez Hoodbhoy which said that "TTP is undefeatable" as the Afghan rulers are in cahoots with them. "If Pakistan is to eventually defeat TTP and its backers in Kabul, our soldiers must know what they are fighting for and why. An ideologically confused army cannot hope to fight and win. Without a clearly spelt-out cause, there cannot be a strong motivation. Else Pakistan will lose and TTP will triumph."
He underscores the need, clarity of intent and determination to act against the TTP with a comparison. "By official counts, there were 70,000 deaths from terrorism in 2002-2014, whereas Pakistanis killed in all four Pakistan-India wars add up to around 18,000.".
Prior to this Pakistan's Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah has said that the government could reinitiate negotiations with the TTP if the terror outfit "comes under the ambit of the Constitution."
The volte-face came just a day after the minister said that the government would not hold talks with any terrorist organisation, be it TTP.
The Pak government although at the 40th National Security Committee meeting, vowed to show 'zero tolerance' for terrorism amid the spurt in terrorist strikes by banned outfit (TTP).
Notably, this zero-tolerance stance on terrorism comes at a time when the peace agreement between the TTP and the Pakistan administration was revoked. And recently Pakistan's Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said that despite the agreement, Afghanistan's soil is being used for attacks against his country.
Asif also pointed out that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa accounted for 58 per cent of all terrorist incidents in Pakistan, with some of them also occurring in Balochistan. (ANI)