LANDI KOTAL: The Khyber Agency political administration has dissolved the Malagori peace committee, saying the body has achieved its objectives.

However, the chief of the peacecommittee said that they were not taken into confidence about dissolving the body.

Political Agent Shahab Ali Shah told Dawn that Malagori peace committee achieved most of its objectives so there was no justification to keep it intact.

`The peace committee was for a purpose and for a particular period of time. The political administration, with assistance of the committee, established peace in Malagori subtehsil of Jamrud, which was duly acknowledged on a number of occasions,` he said. Such committees were for a particular period and not for anindefinite time, he added.

Formed in 2008 after Bara-based militant organisation Lashkar-i-Islam and Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan tried to establish their foothold in Malagori territory, the committee was consisted of 4,000 tribesmen. The political administration pledged to provide financial support to the committee as most of its members were paid monthly remuneration.

Malak Abdul Manan, the chairman of the committee, told Dawn that the committee successfully thwarted efforts by LI and TTP to establish their bases in Malagori. He claimed that they also cleared their area of allthe anti-state and anti-social elements during the last seven years of its existence.

Mr Manan claimed that they arrested more than 12 members of militant groups and handed them over to administration. He said that they also destroyed narcotics dens and helped khasadars to recover abducted men in different localities of Malagori area.

Expressing his displeasure over the official decision to dissolve the peace committee, he said that political administration did not take the members of the body into confidence nor they were given any reason about itsabrupt dissolution.

`We were always at the forefront to take on the dangerous militant groups when the committee was active,` Mr Manan said. He added that most of the committee`s members felt threatened and insecure as they were a prime target of militant groups.

Political Agent Shahab Ali Shah, however, told this scribe that the administration had never asked Malagori peace committee members to dismantle their own security mechanism as the same was done by most of them prior to the formation of the committee in 2008.

He pledged to provide security escortto those, who felt threatened from outlawed groups. He said that he would also recommend issuance of arms licences for their personal security.

The committee chief, Malak Abdul Manan, and his deputy Malak Fazal Maula also held a detailed meeting with the political agent on Monday at Khyber House but they were not satisfied with official assurances.

The two elders were also not happy with the suspension of monthly stipend to the committee members and demanded of the administration to issue them two months pending payment before a formal announcement of the dissolution of their committee.