ISLAMABAD: Religious parties in the Senate called on Thursday for an immediate halt to a new crackdown on tribal militants in the Bannu district, while the rest kept up their support for the military operation against Taliban in the Malakand division.

Senators from the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) and the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) put aside their mutual rivalry to attack the three-day punitive operation in the Janikhel and Bakakhel areas of the tribal Frontier Region of Bannu district for last week’s kidnapping of a students’ convoy of Razmak Cadet College.

But there was no immediate response from the government on the complaints made by the members of the religious parties while speaking on points of order despite a demand from JUI’s Ismail Buledi that the interior minister, or his deputy, explain within an hour alleged targeting of the house of his party’s district chief and madressahs.
 
Several senators from other parties, including ruling coalition partners Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Awami National Party (ANP) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) as well as opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N and the PML-Q condemned, in their speeches in a debate, the perceived Taliban barbarity seen in Swat and other districts of the Malakand division.

They praised the military for clearing some of these areas from the rebels since a full-scale operation was launched there last month.

The senators of religious parties mostly accused the military of mainly targeting innocent population but refrained from commenting on the militants’ challenge to the writ of the state and the widely complained atrocities such as beheading people, flogging women, burning schools and attacking shrines.

The Malakand operation is also likely to dominate the budget session of the National Assembly that will begin at 10am on Friday.

PPP secretary-general Jehangir Badar, taking part in the Senate debate, called upon all political parties, including those who did not contest last year’s general election, to join hands to save Pakistan from terrorism and for its ‘development and reorganisation’.

He said his was a ‘very flexible’ party that could to go any length for a national consensus for the sake of the wellbeing of the country and its poor people.

Chairman Faooq H. Naek informed the house that Information and Broadcasting Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira would wind up on Friday the debate on the situation in Swat and adjacent areas and the condition of about three million people displaced by fighting there.

Earlier, rising on a point of order, JUI’s Maulana Mohammad Khan Shirani said the state was not meeting its constitutional obligation to protect the lives and property of its citizens.

He referred to violence in several parts of the country, while his party colleague Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri complained ‘whoever has a beard and wears a turban is regarded as a terrorist’. Maulana Haideri said he feared the military operations would be extended to Balochistan.

JI’s Prof Mohammad Ibrahim said his house in Bannu was affected by curfew, which he said had suspended all business activity for three days. ‘This operation must be stopped,’ he said.

PPP’s Raza Rabbani, speaking on a point of order, said it was time for the government to consider terminating the privatisation of the Karachi Electric Supply Company because of the perceived failure of the utility’s new owners to improve its performance and chronic power shortages in the city.

The demand was supported by MQM’s Tahir Hussain Mashhadi, who asked what he called ‘our princes of darkness’ to explain why they were not doing it.

Minister of State for Interior Tasneem Ahmed Qureshi, responding to a complaint from PML-N’s Syed Zafar Ali Shah about a reported police obstruction of nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan from attending the graduation ceremony of his granddaughter, said the action had been taken only ‘for the purpose of security in the present situation’.