INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO. 755
B.RAMAN
On June 24,2012, about 100 followers of Maulana
Fazlullah, a Pakistani Taliban leader who used to operate from the Swat Valley
of the Khyber-Pakhtunkwa Province of Pakistan and who have since taken
sanctuary in the Nuristan area of Afghanistan after they were driven out of
Swat by the Pakistani Army in 2009, infiltrated into the Dir Area of Pakistan
and ambushed a Pakistani military convoy and captured 17 soldiers. They then
retreated into Nuristan. On June 29, they disseminated a video showing the
pictures of the heads of the kidnapped soldiers and their army identification
cards.
2.They
announced through Sirajuddin Ahmad, Fazlullah’s cousin and spokesman,
that their jihad against the Pakistan Army was continuing despite the set-back
suffered by them in the Swat Valley and expressed their determination to re-establish
their control over the Swat Valley. In the Swat Valley, Maulana Fazlullah had
become well known as Mulla FM radio
because he used to address the residents of the valley and conduct
Friday prayers through an FM radio station.
3.Commenting on the brutal massacre of the 17
kidnapped soldiers by the Pakistani Taliban group headed by Fazlullah, the
“Daily Times” of Lahore wrote in an editorial titled “Murder Most Foul” as
follows:” The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan militants now, it seems, have found
sanctuary in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces, which, ironically, are under the
Haqqani network’s control. All along, our establishment, to the detriment of
the nation, has been giving safe havens to its proxies and now these same
proxies seem to be returning the favour by giving shelter to the
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the enemies of the Pakistani state. It seems like
our policy of waging proxy war by using these jihadi murderers has boomeranged
to hit us hard.”
4.On July 10,2012, six Pakistani soldiers and a policeman
were killed when unidentified gunmen opened fire on a Pakistani Army camp in
Wazirabad in Punjab's district of Gujrat, 150 kilometres (100 miles) southeast
of Islamabad. The Pakistani Taliban was later reported to have claimed
responsibility for the attack. A few hours before the attack, an anti-NATO
procession to protest against the Government’s decision to lift the ban on the
movement of NATO supplies from Karachi to Afghanistan had passed through the
area on its way to Islamabad. The Army camp had reportedly been set up to
prevent any untoward incident.
5.Commenting on the incident, the “Friday Times”
wrote: “That the insurgents, once tools of the ‘deep state’, have now turned
against their mentors has exposed the blinkered policies followed by the Generals
over many years. The severity of the event, if seen together with the recent
upper Dir attacks, is enough to ring alarm bells on a future, not too far away,
where an unruly situation awaits Pakistan. The spate of attacks, that too on
multiple targets across Pakistan, is an indication that the insurgents can no
longer be considered to be confined to just the tribal regions. Hinting at its
future course of action after striking the military camp in Wazirabad, the TTP
has indicated it is activating its Punjabi Taliban wing, meaning more attacks
in Punjab.”
6.And the threatened attack by the Punjabi Taliban
came early on the morning of July 12,2012, when unidentified gunmen entered a
private hostel in Lahore and killed nine policemen working in the prison
department of the Khyber Pakhtunkwa province who were staying there. They were
undergoing training in the National Academy of Prison Administration in Lahore
run by the Federal Government.
7. Since the Academy could not provide
accommodation to all the trainees in its premises,28 from the KP province and
three from Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir
(POK) had been put up in a private hostel. According to an IGP of
Lahore, about 10 terrorists reached the hostel at about 5-30 AM in a car and
three motor cycles, indiscriminately opened fire and threw hand-grenades and
escaped in their vehicles.
8.According to the Agence France Presse (AFP),one
Ehsanullah Ehsan, who claimed to be a spokesman of the Pakistani Taliban, rang up the AFP
office and said that the attack proved
“no place is beyond our reach”. He claimed that five attackers had targeted the
policemen because Taliban inmates were tortured in prisons and added that the
raid was “part of chain of attacks” that started in Punjab’s Gujrat district on
July 9 and would continue.
9.After the May 22,2011, attack by the
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan on the PNS Mehran, the base of the air wing of the
Pakistan Navy in Karachi, there was a lull in the attacks of the Pakistani
Taliban on governmental targets, particularly in the non-tribal areas. However,
the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi ( LEJ), which is considered as identical with what is
referred to as the Punjabi Taliban, has kept up its attacks on Shia targets in
Balochistan. It is reported to have killed about 80 Shias, mainly Hazaras, in
Balochistan since the beginning of this year, without any action being taken
against it by the Pakistani authorities. Mr.Rehman Malik, Interior Adviser to
the Pakistan Government, has been periodically blaming the LEJ for some of the
violent incidents in Karachi.
10. While the followers of Fazlullah, who operate
from Nuristan in Afghanistan, and those of Hakimullah Mehsud, who operate from
North Waziristan in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan,
are referred to as the Pashtun Taliban, the cadres of the LEJ, who operate from
sanctuaries in Pakistani Punjab, are referred to as the Punjabi Taliban.
11. After a lull of a little more than a year,
these elements have resumed their attacks on Governmental targets. The
resumption of the attacks cannot be attributed to the resumption of NATO
transit supplies, since the attack in Dir took place before the NATO supplies were
resumed and the ban was still in force. The reasons for the resumption of the
attacks on Governmental targets in the non-tribal areas are not clear. (
14-7-12)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd),
Cabinet Secretariat, Govt of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director,
Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate, Chennai Centre For China
Studies. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com . Twitter: @SORBONNE75 )
