MIRAMSHAH, Nov 7: The outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan chose on Thursday Mullah Fazlullah, a fugitive militant ensconced in Afghanistan, as its new leader.

The umbrella organisation representing dozens of militant groups vowed to take revenge from Pakistani rulers and security forces for the killing of its leader Hakeemullah Mehsud in a drone attack last week.

Miramshah, the headquarters of North Waziristan, reverberated with gunfire in celebration after the announcement of the selection of the 39-year-old militant leader from Swat, who ruled the northern district for two years before he was driven out in a military operation in 2009.

He had entered into a peace deal with the then ruling Awami National Party in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through his father-in-law Maulana Sufi Muhammad, leading to enforcement of the Nizam-i-Adl Regulation in 2009. But the deal collapsed when militants refused to lay down arms and a full-fledged military operation was launched in Swat.

According to intelligence officials, Fazlullah, who was known as Radio Mullah for his use of FM frequencies to broadcast sermons to the people of Swat, was in Afghanistan’s eastern Nuristan province from where his fighters carried out raids on Pakistani border posts.

The Fazlullah group had accepted responsibility for a roadside bombing in Upper Dir that killed Maj Gen Sanaullah Niazi and another officer in mid-September this year and subsequently released a video of the attack.

The TTP announced that its shura had also chosen Sheikh Khalid Haqqani, a little known militant leader from Swabi, as its deputy leader, effectively shifting the militant leadership from the tribal region to the settled districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

In a recent video message, Khalid Haqqani outlined TTP’s global jihad mission and said: “Our ongoing struggle is not restricted to the boundaries of Pakistan but connected to all [jihadi] movements in different regions of the world.”

“Now we have people at the helm in the TTP who are opposed to talks with the government. This indicates the mood within the TTP,” a senior security official said.

“Not that there has ever been any optimism before, but this development changes the entire equation,” he said.

“The leadership has passed on from one set of radicals to another. They are all hardliners.”

But some former security officials said the appointment of leaders from outside the tribal region indicated a rift between rival groups within the TTP vying for the top slot.

“The Mehsuds wouldn’t let the leadership go away from TTP’s birthplace,” former intelligence officer retired Brig Asad Munir said.

“Fazlullah and Khalid Haqqani have been brought in to avert a rift between rival Mehsud groups,” he said.

But the leader of TTP executive shura, Asmatullah Shaheen Bhittani, said at a news conference in Miramshah that the unanimous election of the new leaders disproved the ‘propaganda’ about a rift within the TTP.

He also threatened that the “federal government and Punjab and other provinces and security forces will be our target”.

He held Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif responsible for the death of Hakeemullah. “He bargained and sold out Hakeemullah to the Americans and we hold Nawaz Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League responsible for his death,” he said.

Bhittani said the militants would expand their activities to Punjab which so far has largely remained peaceful. “We are not politicians who issue hollow threats. Our revenge from Punjab, the federal government and the security forces will be exemplary,” he said while talking to Dawn.

“But we assure the people that they would not be harmed.”

However, the assurance is likely to be believed only by a few people as the government says about 50,000 people have lost their lives in terrorist attacks in more than a decade of militant activities in the country.

Bhittani accused the government of pursuing a dual policy. “Pakistani rulers are slaves of the Americans and Pakistan is a US colony. The rulers are keeping the people in the dark and deceiving the nation by speaking about talks while conspiring with the US to harm the Taliban,” he alleged.

(According to news agencies, Asmatullah Shaheen said at the press conference that the TTP would not negotiate with the government “until it announces the complete enforcement of sharia”.

“There will be no more talks as Mullah Fazlullah is already against negotiations with the Pakistan government,” Taliban spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said.

“We are one hundred percent sure that Pakistan fully supports the United States in its drone strikes,” he said.

Fazlullah opposes polio vaccinations and ordered closure of girls’ schools.)