Edit in The News : Words leave you speechless when you think about the brazen murders of four women vocational trainers in North Waziristan on February 22. It was a daylight attack and the attackers managed to escape with ease despite the presence of security personnel across this tribal district that has been merged with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. According to reports, five women in a vehicle were driving through Eppi village near Mirali, when they came under fire which killed four of the women on the spot. Reportedly, they had come from the nearby district of Bannu. The driver of the vehicle also suffered bullet injuries and is under treatment. The police have confirmed that these women were working for a technical institute based in Bannu and giving vocational training to local women in that area. On the same day, in another incident vehicles had been stopped and eight people removed from them and taken away. One was killed. It is not known who is behind these attacks. But they are being linked with militancy in the area and a revival of the groups who have been active in the region before.
What is perhaps most sad is that no NGO has come forward to accept the four women who died. No group has said it had employed them or that it was in any way responsible for their safety or even that it mourned their deaths. This suggests just how terrified people are of militants and the threat they still hold over the people of the region. The authorities have been claiming time and again that the merged districts of the tribal areas have been cleared of terrorists. Each operation has claimed victories against terrorists and now even a thousands of kilometres long fence on the Afghan border is in place. Despite all this, the local people and especially women appear to be at the mercy of terrorists who strike at will. The ISPR has said that, while the military can and will take on terrorists, extremism also has to be tackled by the people of the area themselves by raising their voice against it and telling people around them how dangerous it is for them and for the entire area. Greater work on this needs to be begun by the government so that people can be educated about the risks of terrorism. The people of North Waziristan have seen the horrors it can bring and certainly most of them do not want to see these horrors again.
The incident is also being linked to developments in Afghanistan and new activity by the Afghan Taliban. It is thought the new attacks may be a part of their campaign to show that they still have strength and capability. Talks with the Kabul government are going on in Doha but there is no sign that these are heading in any particular direction or proving to be very effective. Pakistan needs to keep examining its strategy against terrorism and determining how best to handle it so that more deaths can be avoided and people persuaded to work together with the military to end this menace, which has over the years claimed thousands of lives of innocent people in the country.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/794572-the-terror-challenge
The Express Tribune: Killing of aid workers
Afresh wave of terrorist activity in North Waziristan near the Afghan border has taken the lives of four women reportedly working with a local NGO as sewing teachers. The local police confirmed the incident to be a terrorist attack, making it another reminder of how vulnerable soft targets remain. The attack, incidentally, took place on the anniversary of 2017’s Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad. That operation was aimed at fishing terrorists out of urban areas after previous operations, most notably Zarb-e-Azb, dismantled their infrastructure in the tribal belt. The military says that some 300,000 IBOs have been conducted since that time as part of a strategy involving counter-terrorism and counter-extremism.
Pakistan’s strategy in the war against terrorism has been to “clear, hold, build and transfer”. Once an area is cleared of terrorists and secured, the state will build and uplift it, hoping to make all gains irreversible. There is nothing wrong with this approach. In fact, it is generally accepted as a good one. But as long as terrorist attacks keep occurring, it will be impossible to make any gains, no matter how hard-fought, genuinely irreversible.
While attacks have dramatically decreased when compared to their peak before the military operations in the region, but they still occur with worrying frequency. The contributing factors may have changed, but that is no consolation for the victims and their families. Whether a terrorist is homegrown or foreign, whether the plot was hatched on Pakistani soil or across our borders, the victims will still be mourned the same way. The protection of citizens’ lives is not an optimistic ideal, but a requirement for the state. Thus, if peace and security are the goals, then even one attack is too many.
That being said, the uptick in attacks along the border with Afghanistan must be brought up with the government in Kabul. The country continues to show little desire to lose its reputation as a world-leading exporter of terrorists, nor is it taking the necessary steps to help its neighbours secure their own borders.https://tribune.com.pk/story/2285789/killing-of-aid-workers
Dawn: edit : Return of militancy
A WORRYING trend observed in Pakistan’s northern areas over the last several months saw a dramatic escalation on Monday. In a brazen daytime attack, masked gunmen shot dead four female vocational trainers travelling in a van near Mirali, North Waziristan district. While the driver was injured, another trainer escaped unhurt.
The victims were working for a technical institute in Bannu to impart skill development to local women. Coincidently, the attack took place on the fourth anniversary of the launch of Operation Raddul Fasaad that followed on the heels of the kinetic operations that had successfully destroyed the terrorist infrastructure in the tribal areas. Based mainly on intelligence-based operations, Raddul Fasaad tackled the tentacles of militancy that had spread throughout the country. At a press conference on Monday, DG ISPR Maj Gen Babar Iftikhar said that more than 375,000 IBOs had been carried out in Pakistan over the past four years to curb urban terrorism and dismantle remaining militant networks.
Nothing, however, quite underscores the return of violent extremism as does the mass murder of innocent women working for the good of society. And make no mistake, this act, the very audacity of it, was meant to send a message: the militants are confident enough to again carry out the kind of attacks that spread terror in large swathes of the country not too long ago. The signs have been there for some time. There has been an unmistakable uptick in targeted killings of civilians as well as deadly clashes of militants with security personnel in the tribal areas.
The reunification in Afghanistan of several splinter groups with the TTP that, according to a recent UN report, was overseen by Al Qaeda, have heightened the terrorist threat in the region. The same document also held the TTP responsible for more than 100 cross-border attacks between July and October 2020. While no one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack on Monday, the KP police believe the TTP are the perpetrators. However, the modus operandi also tallies with the obscurantist agenda of the Shura-i-Mujahideen. An extremist group based in North Waziristan, it has threatened music shop owners, barbers, etc and, in one of its recent flyers, warned women to desist from working with NGOs.
The fact is, extremism is a hydra-headed monster that needs a sustained, multifaceted approach to vanquish. In that, we have fallen woefully short. Efforts at mounting a counter-narrative, which was critical to secure the gains made on the battlefield, have been piecemeal and inconsistent. Paigham-i-Pakistan, that much-vaunted unified message against extremism signed by 1,829 Islamic scholars in 2018, looked good on paper but was never owned by the religious community. The process cannot be forced or imposed from above: the state must strengthen the hand of progressive forces that have a stake in the local communities. It is the only long-term solution. https://www.dawn.com/news/1609087/return-of-militancy
