PESHAWAR: Awami National Party general secretary Mian Iftikhar Hussain has said that the government should review the National Action Plan in the light of recent wave of terrorism and find out why the terrorists are targeting Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

In a press statement issued here on Thursday, the ANP leader said that all the 20 points of the NAP should be reviewed to know why terrorists were taking revenge from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He said that had the state taken action against the banned outfits without any distinction of good or bad then situation would have been much different in the province today. He said that those groups, which were once considered ‘good’, were these days attacking innocent civilians and the state institutions.

Mr Hussain also criticised Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan who used to blame that acts of terrorism were a reaction to the drone attacks. He said that the leader of the party ruling the province should tell the people what was the cause of these recent attacks and why the government was unable to foil them.

The ANP leader said the state should realise that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was being targeted in an organised manner and the security forces should also fight back in an organised manner to foil such attacks. He warned that if the recent attack which took lives of 17 innocent citizens was the reaction to 13 hangings, which had just been announced and not implemented yet, there was a fear that more lives were still at stake.

Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2016