But his call for a united fight against what he called ‘enemies of the country’ received a mixed reception with opposition calls for more information and a prominent government ally and one-time Taliban sympathiser dissociating from newly launched military operation in the Malakand division.
At the start of a debate on the situation, the prime minister also announced a government decision to call an international donors’ conference in Islamabad soon to mobilise funds to help hundreds of thousands of people displaced by fighting, mainly in Swat and three other adjoining districts.
Mr Gilani agreed with opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan’s demand for calling an all-parties conference to discuss the ‘grave situation’ confronting the country and also offered an in-camera briefing for parliamentary group leaders by senior officials of law-enforcement agencies engaged in the campaign.
He said the government ordered the new full-scale military operation last week when ‘we were left with no option’ after the rebels responded to the enforcement of a Sharia regulation demanded by them as part of controversial peace deal by challenging even the country’s constitution, democratic system, judiciary and the writ of the government and taking law-enforcement officials as hostages.
‘They are enemies of the country,’ the prime minister said about what he called ‘terrorists who have no religion… and who don’t accept anything’ and added: ‘They are following some foreign agenda (and) want to conquer this country.’
But he did not name any foreign power helping the militants, who are usually linked with Afghan Taliban movement and Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network that US-led western forces in Afghanistan are seeking to eliminate after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
‘With this conscientious nation and a patriotic military, we can defend the county,’ the prime minister said. ‘However strong the terrorists may be, they cannot face the military. We will make them surrender and establish the (government’s) writ.’
EXIT POLICY
But Mr Gilani said military action could not be a permanent solution of the problem and that it had to be followed by an ‘exit policy’ with provisions for strengthening other law-enforcement agencies with enhanced capacities and better equipment, bomb-proof police stations and devices to jam illegal FM radio broadcasts used for rebel propaganda.
Referring to the large-scale exodus of civilian population from the troubled region, the prime minister said all matters pertaining to the internally displaced persons (IDPs) would be managed and coordinated by the NWFP government with the help of a special federal support group to be headed by Lt-Gen Nadeem Ahmed, a former deputy chairman of the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority. Its tasks would include registration of IDPs, medical cover for them and relief supplies.
He said the provincial government would assess damages due to fighting and consider giving tax exemption for the affected areas.
WALKOUT
Chief of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam Maulana Fazlur Rehman, whose party had once been a supporter of the Afghan Taliban and is now a part of the PPP-led coalition government, surprised the house by staging a protest walkout at the end of his speech in which he said he had not been consulted before taking the new military action, which he said was neither timely nor right.
Opposition leader Nisar Ali Khan also complained that most members of the house were as ignorant about the new ‘declaration of war’ as they were about the failed peace deal they had supported but said his Pakistan Muslim League-N would not oppose the new operation and ‘will be with you if anyone challenges the writ of a democratic government’.
But he said it was also ‘our duty to stay the hand that bombs our people’ as done by unmanned US drones in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
The prime minister specially responded to the concerns voiced by the opposition leader and said his government would not compromise on ‘national sovereignty, respect and dignity’ and also assured the JUI leader that there would be no repetition of not taking his party into confidence in the future.
Pakistan Muslim League-Q’s NWFP president Amir Muqam and former interior minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao both called for avoiding military bombing in towns and for prompt and better relief for the IDPs in their speeches in the debate, which will resume on Tuesday at 10am.
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