In an address to the nation, Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani said nefarious activities of militants had reached a stage where a decisive step against them had become inevitable.
‘We will not bow down before terrorists and extremists and force them to lay down arms,’ he declared.
The prime minister stopped short of scrapping the Swat peace deal, but said sincerity of the government in pursuing reconciliation was misconstrued as weakness.
He said there was an understanding that militants would lay down arms after enforcement of the Nizam-i-Adl but it did not happen.
Mr Gilani said the time had come when the nation should unite against the elements which wanted to take Pakistan hostage at gunpoint and were hell-bent on putting the country’s future at stake.
‘Nobody can be allowed to challenge the writ of the government,’ he remarked. He said the country was facing two big challenges today: national security and economic progress. He said the two were interlinked because economic and industrial progress was not possible without peace and security.
He said the people who cooperated with security forces were victimised and hundreds of thousands were forced to migrate to other areas.
He said girls were being stopped from going to schools, public and private properties were occupied and damaged, women subjected to shameless treatment and to add insult to injury, all these steps were taken in the name of Islam.
He said the army had been called out to eliminate terrorists and protect the life and property of people in Swat. He said an amount of Rs1 billion had been allocated for rehabilitation of displaced persons. One member of every family which had lost a breadwinner would be given a job.
He appealed to all politicians to support efforts of the government. He urged ulema to highlight the true face of Islam which has no room for suicide attacks and oppression.
The prime minister also urged the international community to help Pakistan in rehabilitating displaced persons and for enhancing the capacity of its security forces to fight terror.
REACTION
The Pakistan Muslim League-N announced support for the military action. A PML-N spokesman, Siddiqul Farooq, said as militants had challenged the writ of the state, it was important to take action against them.
He said the PML-N would like the government to immediately call an all-party conference to evolve consensus. The ANP also supported the announcement. ‘It seems the man (Sufi Mohammad) we had entrusted with the task of getting the peace deal implemented had become hostage to the will of extremists,’ ANP’s senior vice-president Haji Adeel said.
He said the NWFP government was taken into confidence before the prime minister announced the action.
Former amir of the Jamaat-i-Islami, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, opposed the move, but several religious scholars, including Mufti Muneebur Rehman and Sahibzada Fazal Karim of JUP, welcomed it.
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