Khyber Agency councillors, elders and lawyers have criticised NWFP police and security agencies for linking a missile attack on the provincial capital to the agency, and claimed that it was a “pre-planned government strategy” to target the agency after the Bajuar strike in its war on terror. Unidentified terrorists fired three Russian-made multi-barrel missiles at the Peshawar International Air Port and a madrassa on November 4 from an unknown location. “We (tribesmen) are 100 percent sure that the missile attack in Peshawar was carried out by either security agencies or the missiles were fired from the Afghan border only 34 kilometres away. No tribesman from here could dare do so,” said tribesmen from Khyber Agency. “We are true Pakistanis. We are not against the security forces, the administration or the state. Everything that is done in tribal agencies is observed by the government. All anti-state activities are being carried out by the government, and government institutions are responsible for disturbing the peaceful environment of the tribal agencies,” Taj Mahal Afridi, secretary general of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) councillors and a resident of Khyber Agency, told Daily Times.
He strongly criticised the NWFP police for blaming the Khyber Agency for the attack “without evidence”.
“The frontier police is levelling baseless statements to hide their failure in maintaining peace in the provincial capital, while the political administration is quite calm about two Islamic organisations – Lashakar-e-Islami and Ansarul Islam – taking the law into their own hands. The political agent is the king of the tribal agency ... nobody can be involved in any such activity without taking him into confidence. Everything in the agency is going in the wrong direction,” said Afridi. “It is a clear indication that the government is making its way into the agency for its so-called war on terror.”
Allah Noor Afridi, a Khyber Agency elder, said it was a “pre-planned strategy” of agencies and the political administration to “accuse” the agency of anti-state activities.