Edit in Business Recorder, Mar 1, 2023
During the recent months TTP terrorists have focused on targeting the police. In the latest incident last Saturday in Balochistan’s Khuzdar district, two police officers were martyred and two others critically injured when a bomb attached to their vehicle went off.
The same day, a police patrol came under attack in Lakki Marwat city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), causing injuries to four. This has been going on not only in the border region adjoining Afghanistan but also in other parts of the country.
On January 30, as many as 100 people, mostly policemen, were martyred and countless others wounded in a suicide bombing on a mosque inside the Peshawar Police Lines compound. A TTP faction, Jamaatul Ahrar, claimed responsibility for the carnage. Last month, i.e., on February 17, three TTP militants stormed police headquarters in Karachi. Four law enforcers and a civilian lost their lives before the police, supported by security forces, killed the three intruders.
The police are in the crosshairs of TTP because they are an easy target and the effect is high in terms of creating fear in the public mind. The police lack both training and the necessary resources to deal with militants equipped with military grade rifles and other sophisticated weapons they got hold of from the stocks American and other Western forces left behind while exiting from Afghanistan.
They are also reported to use drones for surveillance over police outposts in the tribal districts of KP. Clearly, the police are no match for these trained and fully armed fighters. Before the ill-conceived ‘peace talks’ between Pakistan and TTP mediated by Afghan Taliban fell through last November, a large number of these militants were permitted to come back from Afghanistan.
The result is a sharp escalation in attacks on the police, security forces and civilian targets, planned and directed by TTP leaders hosted by their ideological brothers ruling Afghanistan. The effort to defeat these enemies of the State and its people will not bring the desired results as long as they have safe refuge across the border, despite the Kabul government’s claim that it does not allow its territory to be used against other countries (an undertaking the Afghan Taliban gave the international community as part of the Doha Agreement), particularly its neighbours.
Only recently, a high-level delegation led by Defence Minister Khawaja Asif and comprising, among others, ISI head Gen Nadeem Anjum, visited Kabul and met with Afghan officials, including acting Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani who had tried to broker a peace deal with the TTP. Considering that for a while the Afghan Taliban have been saying that the TTP militants are in Pakistan rather that Afghanistan, the delegation must have presented them with incontrovertible evidence of TTP terrorists’ presence in Afghanistan.
According to a Foreign Office statement, “matters relating to the growing threat of terrorism in the region, particularly by TTP and ISKP came under discussion. And the two sides agreed to collaborate to effectively address the threat of terrorism posed by various entities and organisations”. It remains to be seen if the Kabul government is serious about addressing the threat its TTP friends pose to peace and security of this country.
https://www.brecorder.com/news/40228918/police-in-ttps-crosshairs
