The Pakistani Taliban – also known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or the TTP, have stepped up attacks across Pakistan with a spate of incidents over the past week prompting the Shehbaz Sharif-led government to throw blame at the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government for a surge in “terrorist activities”.
Interior minister Rana Sanaullah Khan on Thursday blamed the provincial government, led by the Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, saying the number of TTP fighters in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area was between 7,000 and 10,000. Some militants, who previously laid down arms, had also secretly resumed activities, the minister said, adding that the rebels were accompanied by 25,000 members of their families.
The TTP, however, issued a statement that the militant group was only working against “Pakistani forces”. On Christmas, the US embassy had issued a warning of a possible terror threat against American citizens at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad and prohibited American staff from visiting the five-star facility.
A day later on December 26, even the Saudi Arabian embassy in Islamabad issued a security advisory instructing its citizens in Pakistan to restrict their movement.
But the TTP said the Pakistani government was spreading false information about threats to foreigners. “We are not planning such things. Diplomats and foreigners shouldn’t pay heed to such fake news,” it said.
Why is the TTP in the news again?
The TTP’s militant activities have increased since November after it unilaterally ended a months-long ceasefire with the Pakistan government, accusing the military of violating the truce.
The banned militant group is an ally of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in neighbouring Afghanistan last year as US and NATO troops were in the final stages of withdrawal after a 20-year war. The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan has emboldened the Pakistani Taliban.
Sanaullah’s remarks come at a time when the TTP conducted the first suicide bombing in the capital Islamabad since 2014 in which one police officer and two suspected militants, including a woman belonging to the outfit, were killed on December 23. Six others, including four policemen, were injured in the bombing in an upscale residential area.
“The biggest reason for this is the failure of (the) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government and Counter Terrorism Department (…) It is their job to stop it,” the interior minister told Pakistani newspaper Dawn.
Sanaullah further said Pakistan had its army for the protection of the borders and the provincial government could request the federal government if it was failing to handle such “elements of terrorism”. He said the group had never scattered and was further bolstered by the success of the Afghan Taliban.
Talking about the idea of an all-party conference or a national security meeting on the emerging threat of terrorism, the minister said such huddles must take place but stressed that the KP government first needed to sit with the federal government and talk.
“The KP government needs to inform the federal government about the law and order in the province – the counter-terrorism department is in peril and the police are demoralised – and ask what help the Centre can extend and it is ready to assist them. We held two meetings in Islamabad where the chief minister was invited but the latter didn’t show up as he was planning to mount on the capital (for a long march) and was not allowed by party chief Imran Khan,” Sanaullah was quoted as saying.
What is the TTP?
Believed to be close to al-Qaeda, the banned TTP is a dreaded militant outfit blamed for several deadly attacks across Pakistan – attack on army headquarters in 2009, assaults on military bases, and the 2008 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.
In 2014, it stormed the Army Public School in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing at least 150 people, including 131 students.
The suicide bombing incident in Islamabad on December 23, was the first since the 2014 courthouse bombing that killed 10 people. On December 25, six army personnel, including an officer, were killed in two separate clashes in the troubled southwestern Balochistan province. Separately, 15 people were injured in a series of grenade attacks in different parts of the province on the same day.
Pakistani authorities have arrested five people suspected of being involved in last week’s suicide car bombing in Islamabad. Sanaullah made the announcement on Twitter on Wednesday, saying the detainees included the suicide bomber’s handler. He said the attacker arrived in the garrison city of Rawalpindi from a former tribal area of Kurram.
(With PTI inputs)
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