One of Pakistain's most deadly Taliban groups has abandoned its armed struggle and announced it will focus on a peaceful campaign calling on the country to adopt Islamic sharia law.
The Punjabi Taliban is believed to have carried out a number of significant terrorist attacks, including the 2009 assault on the Pakistain army's general headquarters in Rawalpindi, in which nine soldiers were killed; the commando raid on the Sri Lankan cricket team in the same year, and the 2011 attack on the naval airbase at Mehran in which 18 servicemen and two US-donated aircraft were destroyed.
It has also been blamed for a number of sectarian atrocities, including attacks on the country's Ahmadi Moslems and the liquidation of Pakistain's Christian minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti in 2011.
The announcement is seen as a further setback for Pakistain's alliance of 'Taliban' terrorist groups, which has suffered a number of fractures in recent weeks.
The Tehrik e Taliban Pakistain umbrella group broke into three factions earlier this month after a group of commanders, mainly Mehsud and Wazir rustics from North Wazoo, announced they had broken away to form their own group.
Observers said they were divided over the Pakistain army's offensive in the tribal areas which has driven thousands of people from their homes and fuelled dissent over whether the gunnies should fight their own country's army. There is also opposition to the umbrella group's leader, Mullah Fazlullah
...son-in-law of holy man Sufi Mohammad. Known as Mullah FM, Fazlullah had the habit of grabbing his FM mike when the mood struck him and bellowing forth sermons. Sufi suckered the Pak govt into imposing Shariah on the Swat Valley and then stepped aside whilst Fazlullah and his Talibs imposed a reign of terror on the populace like they hadn't seen before, at least not for a thousand years or so. For some reason the Pak intel services were never able to locate his transmitter, much less bomb it. After ruling the place like a conquered province for a year or so, Fazlullah's Talibs began gobbling up more territory as they pushed toward Islamabad, at which point as a matter of self-preservation the Mighty Pak Army threw them out and chased them into Afghanistan...
, who is based in Kunar province
... which is right down the road from Chitral. Kunar is Haqqani country.....
in Afghanistan and regarded as an outsider by Wazir and Mehsud rustics.
The rift has been credited with yielding intelligence which led to the arrest of a gang of turbans Pakistain's security forces believe carried out the failed liquidation attempt on Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old schoolgirl who defied the Taliban's ban on female education.
The Punjabi Taliban's existence and the success of its terrorist operations has been a long-standing challenge to government attempts to portray its insurgency as one led by distant gunnies from the country's unruly tribal frontier rather than strongly rooted in Pakistain's heartland.
Its announcement that it was abandoning its "armed struggle" was made with a declaration of its patriotism and desire to defend Pakistain from "outside threats".
Punjabi Taliban chief Ismatullah Muawiya said that after consulting other Moslem leaders, the organization would now limit its use of force to "infidel forces" and would focus on promoting sharia law.
In a video message, Muawiya said the Punjabi Taliban would continue to operate in Afghanistan but would focus on "Dawat Tablig" preaching and called on other Taliban factions to abandon their insurgencies in Pakistain.
He called on the Pakistain government to compensate those affected by its offensive in Waziristan and other tribal agencies and to rehabilitate them with "honour and dignity".
"Peace is the need of the hour to foil conspiracies against Pakistain and its people," he said.
The announcement was welcomed by military sources in Pakistain who said it was a significant development involving a group which had inflicted heavy casualties on the army. Questions remained, however, about the group's intentions in Afghanistan.
"This is a very important group which had been committed to attacks and terrorism, they have been very effective in the past. This [announcement] will demoralise the others. It shows the military operation in North Waziristan is having an effect. It would be very unfortunate though if Pakistain allows them to go to Afghanistan -- we have to make sure they don't use their energies in Afghanistan", said retired Lieutenant-General Talat Masood, a leading strategic analyst.