Inspector General Balochistan Police Tariq Khosa on Thursday vowed to arrest any Taliban militants seeking refuge in the province, while denying claims that Taliban chief Mullah Omar was residing in Quetta. "Really. We asked around an everything. Nobody's seen him."
Addressing a news conference at Provincial Police Headquarters, Balochistan’s newly-appointed police chief stressed that the police was poised to launch a sustained province-wide crackdown on suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, while dismissing claims made by Afghanistan’s intelligence service that a captured Taliban spokesman had disclosed that Mullah Omar was currently in Quetta, under the protection of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. “We will start a new operation soon to arrest any Taliban. But, we also ask the Afghan government to provide us intelligence about such elements, if they have any,” he said, adding that “Mullah Omar is not present in Quetta”.
Stressing that no one would be allowed to use Balochistan as a launch pad for terrorist activities, Khosa said that police’s biggest challenge was to liberate the province, especially Quetta, from the clutches of rocket launching and bomb detonating “sub-nationalists”. Strict action, he warned, would be taken against those elements promoting violence and terrorism in the name of religion.
He also pointed out that Pakistani police had, in recent months, arrested 400 Taliban, 300 of whom had been handed over to Afghanistan. The remaining 100, he said, were being questioned by Balochistan police and would soon also be handed over to the Afghan authorities. On model police force recommendations, Khosa went on to say that he had forwarded to the federal government his proposals to establish a model police force in Gwadar, under the Project Concept-one (PC-one) framework.