by Asif Chaudhry in Dawn, February 1st, 2023LAHORE: A day after a deadly suicide bombing in Peshawar claimed over 100 lives, a police station in Mianwali came under a gun attack by a group of heavily armed militants belonging to banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on Tuesday night. However, police claimed late at night the attack had been repulsed. The attack is significant in that terrorists — who had so far targeted police stations and check…
Posts tagged as “TTP”
by Ozer Khalid in The Express Tribune, Dec 6th, 2022The writer is a senior consultant, foreign policy expert and a columnist.Pakistan’s decision-makers must reassess Islamabad’s Afghanistan policy. Despite Hina Rabbani Khar’s recent high-octane diplomatic charm offensive to Kabul and Pakistan’s outreach, there have been relentless attacks on Pakistani interests along with TTP’s unilaterally shredding the paper-tiger peace-agreement. The attack on Pakistan’s mission in Kabul, gruesomely targeting Chargé d’affaires Ubaidur Rehman Nizamani, is despicable and leaves…
Report in Dawn, December 3rd, 2022KARACHI: After the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) vowed to carry out attacks all over the country, Pakistan on Friday said it was hopeful that Afghanistan would live up to the promise of not allowing its territory to be used for terrorist activities in other countries. Addressing the weekly press briefing, Foreign Office Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said Pakistan has serious concerns over terrorist activities and the issue was raised with…
The devastating suicide attack on Shah Noorani shrine in Khuzdar has underscored the fact that Islamist threat in Balochistan is both evolving and expanding. Initially inter-sectarian, the militant landscape has, apparently, also acquired intra-sectarian character. Similarly, it is political too. The toxic ideology of militant Deobandism under the unsavoury influence of Wahabism gives rise to Islamist terror in Balochistan. If the year 1999 is taken as starting point of Islamist perpetrated violence in Balochistan, the…
The writer is a security analyst. THE recent surge in sectarian violence has done two things. First, it has highlighted the challenges and vulnerabilities the country’s security and law-enforcement forces face in countering terrorism. Second, it has brought to the fore some critical, long-standing questions about the state’s resolve and efforts to counter religiously inspired extremism, mainly violent sectarianism. Violent sectarian organisations are apparently shifting their territorial focus while law-enforcement agencies struggle to chase and…