PESHAWAR: Banned outfit Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has sacked their spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan on Tuesday on making negative remarks over Afghan Taliban and appointed Sheikh Maqbool on Tuesday.
TTP fired their spokesman on Tuesday for making remarks that angered Afghani Taliban, in a move highlighting efforts to patch up divisions within the increasingly fractured insurgency.
However, Sheikh Maqbool has been appointed as new official spokesman after Ehsan. Maqbool is considered close to the Afghan Taliban and has spent much of his time since 2007 in Afghanistan.
Sources closer to TTP’s top leadership said that the announcement was made by a pamphlet distributed by the militants in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region on the Afghan border.
According to pamphlet, “He has made comments that have raised the danger of divisions between the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan Taliban,” and “The Taliban are our foundation and (Afghan Taliban leader) Mullah Omar is our supreme leader. That is why, from today, Ehsanullah Ehsan is no longer our spokesman.”
One TTP commander told Reuters that the Afghan Taliban were incensed when Ehsan told a local newspaper that U.S.-Taliban peace talks in Doha would have no effect on the TTP, suggesting that the two movements were “totally different”.
“After Ehsan’s damaging statements, the Afghan Taliban asked us not to use their stationery or their flag,” he said by telephone from North Waziristan. “This is unacceptable for us.”
It is pertinent to note, both militant groups found some disagreements for some time when Pakistani movement staged attacks against domestic military and civilian targets and others calling for deeper involvement in the Afghan cause.
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