No more excuses for Taliban violence, Bilawal tells Nawaz, Imran

The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Patron-in-Chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has launched a scathing attack on his political opponents who he said must stop “making excuses” for Taliban violence.

Bilawal said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the PTI chief Imran Khan were “letting down the people” by not backing firm military action against the Taliban.

“Perhaps they are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome,” Bilawal said, referring to cases of hostages who sympathise with or even assist their captors. “There is no reason why the national leaders, the so-called leaders, should not speak out against people who are murdering our citizens, murdering our armed forces and claiming responsibility,” Bilawal was quoted as saying.

The remarks are likely to further burnish his reputation as both a brash new arrival on Pakistan’s political scene but also the most outspoken politician in the country on the issue of militancy and extremism.

Sometimes even the mass-casualty suicide attacks on civilians have elicited only meek condemnations. Many politicians are reluctant even to identify the culprits as the TTP.

Bilawal said the tactic had been disastrous, emboldening extremists to target civilians, including Malala Yousafzai, the schoolgirl education activist who nearly died in 2012 after being shot in the head by a Taliban assassin. “This is why people like Malala become targets because the politicians, or the so-called leaders of this country, can’t find the courage to speak out when a 16-year-old girl could. If we all speak in one voice, they can’t kill us all,” he said.

The PPP patron-in-chief said he could speak out only because of the vast security operation that surrounds him at all times and heavily restricts his travel in Pakistan, where he spends much of his time at his fortress-like family compound in Karachi.

“I have a lot of security – I lost my mother to the Taliban because of a lack of security – and that explains partly why I can be so vocal,” he said. “But so does Imran Khan. Nawaz Sharif is the prime minister of Pakistan, Shahbaz Sharif is the chief minister of Punjab. They all have more security than I do. They have no excuse.”

In the past, Imran Khan has said strident rhetoric might endanger the lives of his supporters and party activists. Bilawal has shown no such caution, even though he hopes thousands of members of the public will be attracted to numerous cultural events he has organised across Sindh in the coming weeks. They are part of a festival he has promoted as a deliberate challenge to extremists and militants he derisively calls “cavemen”.

Bilawal is firmly against negotiations with the Taliban, saying the time has come for far-reaching military operations against the TTP, particularly in the militant stronghold of North Waziristan.

But he warned an operation should be in co-operation with Afghanistan, an unlikely proposition given the distrust between Kabul and Islamabad. “With Afghanistan there is no point of us launching an operation over here if they are just going to hop across the border and find sanctuary over there,” he said. “The ideal situation would be an operation from both sides at the same time.”

In recent weeks it had appeared that Nawaz Sharif would finally announce the abandonment of a talks policy his close aides said had failed to make any progress. But instead on Wednesday Nawaz Sharif announced he was giving them one last chance, announcing a hastily assembled commission of intermediaries to try to talk to the TTP.

Bilawal said he was exasperated by the decision: “It is extremely frustrating, not just for me but for the people who risk their lives on a daily basis, for the people who die on a daily basis,” he said.