Taliban will support Pakistan army if India attacks

By Mushtaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR: Baitullah Mahsud, central head of the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Monday announced full support to the army against archrival India if it makes any aggression against the country.

“Thousands of our well-armed militants are ready to fight alongside the army if any war is imposed on Pakistan,” Baitullah told this correspondent on telephone from an undisclosed location.

He said the time had come to wage a real jihad they had been waiting for. “We know very well that the visible and invisible enemies of the country have been planning to weaken this lone Islamic nuclear power. But the “mujahideen” will foil all such nefarious designs of our enemies,” said the top militant commander. Baitullah, who is accused by the government of his alleged involvement in assassination of Pakistan People’s Party chairperson Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi on December 27 last year, said he wanted to assure the nation, government and army that they should not worry about Pakistan’s western borders with Afghanistan as, according to him, thousands of his armed fighters had already been deployed to safeguard the strategically important frontier.

Besides thousands of armed militants, Baitullah Mahsud said, hundreds of would-be bombers were Monday given suicide jackets and explosives-laden vehicles for protection of the border in case of any aggression by the Indian forces. “Our mujahideen would be in the vanguard if fighting broke out. Our fighters will fall on the enemy like thunder,” he declared.

The militant commander maintained that many a people might say the militants had been fighting the army since long, how it would be possible for them now to fight alongside them. “Therefore, I want to make it clear that the army was acting otherwise. But now it would fight for the protection and survival of the country, which is why we will support them,” he said. Baitullah said that Taliban were ready to fight under the Army command. But it would be better for the armed forces to give them a separate sector or specify special targets for us where they could fight the enemy in a fitting manner.