I stumbled on this story reading a foreign blog and was a bit surprised with what I read. In a story from The News, Hamid Mir has stated the following:
All main militant groups fighting in Fata, from South Waziristan to Bajaur and from Mohmand to the Khyber Agency, have contacted the government through different sources after the Mumbai bombings and have offered a ceasefire if the Pakistan Army also stops its operations.
And as a positive sign that this ceasefire offer may be accepted, the Pakistan Army has, as a first step, declared before the media some notorious militant commanders, including Baitullah Mehsud and Maulvi Fazlullah, as “patriotic” Pakistanis.
These two militant commanders are fighting the Army for the last four years and have invariably been accused of terrorism against Pakistan but the aftermath of the Mumbai carnage has suddenly turned terrorists into patriots.
A top security official told a group of senior journalists on Saturday: “We have no big issues with the militants in Fata. We have only some misunderstandings with Baitullah Mehsud and Fazlullah. These misunderstandings could be removed through dialogue.”
Has anyone seen any reports of this in other media outlets? How do the people that have been raising hell inside Pakistan with suicide attacks and wars in the NWFP suddenly become heroes?
Unless the Pakistan Army is about to put the cards on the table with evidence of involvement of RAW (Indian Intelligence) in the Balochistan and NWFP. FATA, Swat unrest?
