PESHAWAR, Oct 24: The Bajaur Agency chapter of the Jamaat-i-Islami has held the secret agencies responsible for what it calls lawlessness across the tribal belt.

Speaking at a news conference here at the Peshawar Press Club on Wednesday, party’s Bajaur Agency chief Sardar Khan denied that the Taliban were behind the turmoil in the tribal agencies.

Instead, he claimed that the secret agencies had spoilt the environment of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas in an effort to advance their own hidden agenda. He said Pakistan and the United States were jointly responsible for the killing of innocent tribesmen in different parts of the tribal region.

He claimed that the political administration of the Bajaur Agency had occupied 102 kanals in the commercial area of Khar and arrested four tribesmen of the Salarzai branch of Maimoon tribe for opposing the illegal occupation by the administration.

He said the administration had fixed the price of land at Rs450,000 per kanal against the market rate of Rs2 million. The tribesmen had denied selling their land to the government, but the political agents and tehsildars were exerting pressure on them to surrender their land to the administration.

He said the political administration in Bajaur was carrying out the US agenda on the instructions of Islamabad and instituting bogus cases against peaceful tribesmen opposed to the presence of US troops in the region.