The Pakistani Taliban has announced an indefinite ceasefire with the government of Pakistan after talks by the Afghan Taliban government.
The Pakistani Taliban (TTP) said that talks in Kabul had made significant progress, and the ceasefire has been extended until further notice.
A Pakistani government official said the talks were moving positively, AFP news agency reported. TTP has been fighting Pakistan’s armed forces for years.
The TTP – Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan – wants to apply its ultra hard-line interpretation of Sharia law to Pakistani territories along the border with Afghanistan. The mountainous region has long been a hotbed of militant activities.
The group has had close but dark ties with the Afghan Taliban reports the BBC’s Sikunda Kermani in Islamabad.
Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan last year, the TTP has stepped up its attacks in Pakistan, killing dozens of government soldiers in 2021.
The ongoing talks in Kabul are between extremists and a jirga, a gathering of Pakistani politicians and tribal elders. It is not clear what the terms of any agreement might be.
An agreement previously agreed between the two sides for an Islamic festival expired on May 30. In the past, similar arrangements have quickly broken down.
The TTP was established in 2007 in response to a Pakistani military operation to clean up the Lal Masjid mosque in Islamabad, where a radical preacher dominated. The group’s founder Baitullah Mehsud was once considered close to Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI.
According to Amira Jadoon, assistant professor at the US Military Academy at West Point, relations between the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban date back to the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US and the fall of the first Taliban government in Afghanistan that year. ,
Following its formation, the TTP turned furious against the Pakistani state, targeting civilians and security forces. The Pakistani military retaliated and drove the TTP leadership into Afghanistan, where it has been conducting a “low-intensity” war against Pakistan since 2015.