PESHAWAR, July 29: A militant commander has warned that ‘mujahideen’ will wage a war against security forces in the Waziristan tribal belt if the government does not stop killing and arresting militants.

He said sector commanders of the ‘mujahideen’ from South and North Waziristan tribal regions had met last week at a secret location and decided to coordinate and launch simultaneous attacks on security forces if there was further escalation in the situation.

“The military is not keeping its words,” Haji Muhammad Omar, commander of the mujahideen from Ahmadzai Wazirs in South Waziristan, told Dawn on telephone.

The 41-year-old militant commander, who succeeded Nek Muhammad killed in a missile attack in June last year, said the mujahideen resented the way the military backed away from their promises and killed and harassed them.

Omar, who together with three other militant commanders had signed a peace deal with the government in November, said the agreements had lost their utility. “It’s been almost a year now and the military has yet to fulfil the promises it had made with us.”

“They said there would be no arrests. Yet they are arresting our mujahideen. They are killing women and children. They said they would remove military and paramilitary posts from inside South Waziristan, which they did not,” he said angrily.

“We ceased fire and did not attack the military or the paramilitary, but they are continuing with their excesses against our mujahideen. This cannot go on. They should tell us whether they want to abide by their words or not,” he said.

Omar said that last week’s meeting of 25 sector commanders made a unanimous pledge to wage a war against the military in South and North Waziristan. But he refused to say who was the overall commander of the ‘mujahideen’ or where the meeting was held.

The architect of peace initiatives in South Waziristan, Peshawar Corps Commander Lt-Gen Safdar Hussain, told a private television channel last week that peace deals signed with militants last autumn were still intact.

Baitullah Mehsud, the commander of Mehsud tribe’s mujahideen, told BBC Urdu Service on Wednesday that the deal he had signed with the government in February this year was no longer holding.

“The government has not kept the agreement with us. It is not holding anymore,” he told the radio.