How nice of them.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan’s interior minister has thanked the Taliban for not staging attacks during this year’s Shiite religious ritual of Ashoura.

Rehman Malik is likely to be criticized for his remarks Tuesday, which appear to reveal the government’s confusion in dealing with militants that have killed thousands of Pakistanis over the last five years.

Sunni extremists like the Taliban have often killed Shiites they regard as infidels over the Ashoura period, which ends Tuesday and passed peacefully in Pakistan.

Malik says he had appealed to the Taliban to “respect” the festival and “I want to thank them for doing that.”