Imran Khan blames negligence of forces for spike in terror attacks in Pak

Imran Khan has said the outlawed Pakistani Taliban was allowed to flourish because of the negligence of the country's security forces, as the former prime minister underlined the importance of working closely with Afghanistan to jointly combat terrorism in the region.

Khan, the chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, who was ousted from power in April 2022, made these comments in an interview with the Voice of America website on Saturday.

In the interview Khan, 70, strongly defended his government's move to greenlight negotiations with the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) terrorist outfit.

Well firstly, what were the choices [the] Pakistani government faced once the Taliban took over and they decided the TTP, and we're talking about 30, [30,000] to 40,000 people, you know, the families included, once they decided to send them back to Pakistan? Should we have just lined them up and shot them, or should we have tried to work with them to resettle them?

We had a meeting, and the idea w