Peshawar, Apr. 12 (ANI): Pakistan”s secular political party- Awami National Party- which governed Pakistan”s militancy-plagued northwest for the past five years is losing hundreds of activists to Taliban attacks, and is likely to be ousted from power by Islamist hard-liners in the May election. The Pakistani Taliban have relentlessly targeted the ANP since it was elected in 2008 to rule the mainly ethnic Pashtun province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the ANP”s former provincial information minister, said Taliban attacks killed around 750 of the party”s activists in the past five years. Among the victims were three provincial lawmakers, including Bashir Bilour, who was a senior minister in the provincial government and an outspoken critic of the Pakistani Taliban, reports the Wall Street Journal. Washington worked closely with the ANP provincial government, and describes the fight against Islamist terrorism as “our war”. But, with the ANP unable to properly campaign because of Taliban violence, and its record in office widely criticized, analysts believe the vote will favour its opponents from conservative and religious parties who want Pakistan to pull out of what they describe as “America”s war”. Analysts say they expect the ANP and the Pakistan Peoples Party to lose seats in the province to conservatives and Islamists, especially to Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) a party led by religious clerics viewed as sympathetic to the Taliban. The ANP administration, which replaced an Islamist-led government, benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid for schools, police equipment, hydroelectric projects, the rehabilitation of Swat Valley after it was taken back from the Taliban in 2009, and to cope with the 2010 floods. Bilour”s 42-year-old son, Haroon, a lawyer by profession, is running for the seat that his father had won five times before in Peshawar, a provincial capital. Haroon said he has no official security assigned to him during the campaign. The protection that the ANP once had in power was withdrawn by the interim government. Haroon said the ANP cannot move freely, like the other parties. It is not a level playing field, he added. (ANI)
