Making A Difference

Fighting Them On Every Street

A new alliance between Punjabi militant groups and Tehrik-e-Taliban has opened up many fronts

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Fighting Them On Every Street
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Four days after the siege of GHQ in Rawalpindi, it was the turn of Lahore to reel under terror attacks. On October 15, Taliban-linked militants, again wearing army and police uniforms, struck in the capital of Punjab, storming the offices of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), a police academy and an elite police training centre. These synchronised fidayeen-style attacks left 25 people dead and another 100 injured.

The attacks began around 9.15 am, beginning with a raid on FIA offices. Fifteen minutes later, terrorists infiltrated the Manawan police academy on the city’s outskirts. Then, at 9.45 am, 10 militants scaled the boundary walls of the police training centre in Bedian and engaged the commandos in a gunbattle lasting over five hours, with helicopters hovering above. Even though the security forces gained control over the training centre, five terrorists managed to escape, leaving behind the bodies of five of their comrades.

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A Punjab faction of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attacks in Lahore. Observers say these devastating strikes across Pakistan are meant to dissuade the country’s security forces from launching a military offensive in south Waziristan, which is the stronghold of the TTP.

What’s worrying the security establishment is the forging of strong links between different Punjab-based militant groups and the Pashtoon-dominated, south Waziristan-based TTP. There are four militant groups operating in Punjab. Of these, the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) are sectarian groups. The other two—Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HUJI) faction of commander Ilyas Kashmiri—have waged jehad in Kashmir. All four owe their ideological affiliation to the Deobandi school. The Jaish is headed by Maulana Mazood Azhar, who was released in the hostage-for-militant swap during the hijack of IC-814 in 1999.

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The pooling of resources has immensely strengthened the Punjabi Taliban—a blanket term for members of banned sectarian and jehadi groups. It’s through them the TTP has managed to plot and execute attacks in the heartland of Pakistan, thereby taking the fight to the army instead of hunkering down in their stronghold of south Waziristan to brazen out the planned military operation.

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