Difa-i-Pakistan Council must be stopped to halt jihadi activities in Pak: DT Editorial

Islamabad -  Difa-i-Pakistan Council must be barred from holding more rallies in Pakistan to stop the uprising of jihadi groups in the country, an editorial has said.    

Jihadi groups have taken the lives of innocents inside and outside Pakistan, and it is now time to put a stop to their activities, the Daily Times editorial has said.   

Difa-e-Pakistan held a rally in Karachi on Sunday, where leaders of various religious and even political parties participated. Ejaz Chaudhry, one of the leaders of Imran Khan’s Pakistan  Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, was also part of it.

The fact that they were able to hold a rally in the port city without any problem was surprising given that the ruling party in Sindh, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), has been quite critical of  the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) for allowing banned outfits to stage rallies in Punjab, the editorial said.                 

Besides condemning the West, particularly the US, and India, the participants of the rally warned the government that the masses will “convert each spot of the country into ‘Tahrir Square’ if  free and fair elections are not held”.

The leaders of Difa-i-Pakistan Council even went to the extent of threatening Pakistani artists who go to India to try their luck in singing and acting.

Insisting that Difa-i-Pakistan Council was provoking a war between India and Pakistan both nuclear armed,  the editorial stressed that these jihadi warriors are going against the  government’s policy and doing the dirty work of the military establishment because of the full backing of the security forces.

Our country cannot be held hostage to the extremist and by no means mainstream agenda of such bigots, it added.