The prospect of peace talks with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a banned militant group, and the Pakistan government remains bleak, a UN Taliban Sanction Monitoring team said in its report and added the group posed a persistent threat to the country’s security.

The group, also known as the Pakistan Taliban, and is responsible for the killing of over 10,000 Pakistan civilians and forces, has benefitted from the fall of the US-backed Afghan democratic government last year, the 1988 Taliban sanctions committee monitoring team has said in a recently released annual report.

The group shares ideological and fraternal ties with the Afghan Taliban and has around 4,000 fighters based in east and south-east areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the report said, which makes it the largest group of foreign fighters based in Afghanistan.

“The group (TTP) is focused on a long-term campaign against the Pakistani state… that ceasefire deals have a limited chance of success”, the U.N. report has warned.

The TTP, which has recently been reinvigorated through the return of 17 splinter groups into its fold, feels that maintaining a hardline position in talks with the Pakistan government would help maintain unity in its ranks. 

The report comes amid ongoing peace talks between the TTP and the Pakistan government as the violence has increased since August last year. Earlier attempts of peace talks, mediated by the Afghan Taliban, had failed to produce any significant result. This year alone, the TTP carried out 46 attacks, mostly targeting security forces, and killed 79 people, according to the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies data.

Furthermore, the emboldened TTP is also threatening the ties between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban, with the former accusing the latter of not doing enough to rein in the militants operating from Afghan soil.

In the ongoing peace talks, the reports suggest the TTP was demanding the withdrawal of security forces from erstwhile tribal areas, de-merger of FATA  and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, withdrawal of cases against its fighters and their release, and introduction of Shariah laws in Malakand Division.

For the Pakistan government, accepting these demands would be extremely hard, at least politically, and may also require changes in the constitution. 

(SAM)