JAMRUD: Participants of a grand peace jirga convened by Chief Minister Muhammad Sohail Afridi at the Jamrud Sports Complex here on Sunday said that people were forced to leave the Tirah Valley and that the displacement was not voluntary.
Members of the public, tribal elders and displaced persons attended the jirga, which rejected what it termed confusion being spread about the evacuation of people from Tirah.
The participants made it clear in unequivocal terms that they did not leave their homes voluntarily but were forcibly displaced.
The jirga participants protested what they described as injustice and oppression inflicted on the people of Tirah and vowed to march towards Islamabad to secure their legitimate rights.
Chief Minister Sohail Afridi welcomed the decisions of the jirga and announced that before proceeding to Islamabad, consultative jirgas would be held in other tribal districts to gather a collective opinion from all the affected areas.
“Thereafter, a joint grand jirga of all tribal districts will be convened to finalise a comprehensive future course of action,” he added.
The chief minister made it clear that decisions taken behind closed doors would not be accepted under any circumstances and that they would clearly convey in Islamabad that such decisions were unacceptable. He said in unequivocal terms that no compromise would be made on the rights of the province and its people, adding that even all the wealth of the world could not buy his loyalty.
Sohail Afridi said that from 2018 to 2022, the law & order situation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa remained relatively stable. However, following a regime change operation and what he termed an external conspiracy, the elected government of Imran Khan was removed, after which, he claimed, a decision was made to re-impose terrorism on the province.
He said the provincial government had warned in advance about the deteriorating situation, but these concerns were dismissed as lies and propaganda, while the federal government of the time failed to show its seriousness.
The chief minister said they were first informed that terrorists had reached the mountains, yet no action was taken. “Later, it was reported that they had descended into the valley, but again no attention was paid. Eventually, the terrorists reached people’s homes and began taking food at gunpoint,” he added.
Sohail Afridi questioned where people could go in such a situation. “The real question is not how the terrorists obtained food, but how they managed to reach people’s homes and where the security forces tasked with stopping them were,” he said.
He said drone attacks on homes later began and innocent civilians martyred in Tirah were portrayed as terrorists. “Even an innocent girl was martyred, and firing was opened on protesters as well, resulting in further loss of precious lives,” he said, adding that all these actions were aimed at paving the way for a military operation.
Sohail Afridi said he had already pointed out that attempts were being made to weaken the people through an operation in Tirah, despite the expectation of snowfall in the area, but his warnings were ignored.
Despite repeated objections, he said, the people of Tirah were forcibly displaced, and when decisions taken behind closed doors appeared to be failing, a misleading impression was created through press releases claiming that people were leaving the area on their own.
He said such press releases were tantamount to expressing distrust in the country’s own institutions.
The chief minister lamented that while tribal people were offering sacrifices for Pakistan, false propaganda was being spread against them.
“The people of the province will not allow this mockery to succeed. They will prove that tribal people are not terrorists; rather, flawed policies are giving rise to terrorism,” he pledged.
He rejected the impression that the provincial government had allocated Rs4 billion for the affectees of Tirah, clarifying that it was actually the responsibility of the federal government, which the provincial government was fulfilling from its own resources.
