Twelve years have passed since Hillary Clinton, who was the US secretary of state at the time, forewarned Islamabad, stating, ‘You can’t expect snakes in your garden to simply attack your neighbours. They will eventually bit the individuals who keep them in the backyard’. In December of last year, Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar used this tale from Clinton’s visit to Pakistan to remind Pakistan of the same. The proscribed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is spreading havoc throughout Pakistan and has driven the Shehbaz Sharif administration to the brink of a large domestic military action, thus the warning is still important today.
SNAKE BARES ITS FANGS
The Taliban in Pakistan (TTP) on Wednesday vowed to assassinate senior figures from the two main parties in the government coalition, the PML-N led by Shehbaz Sharif and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led by Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari. Islamabad has the legal right to intervene against ‘insurgent hideouts’ in Afghanistan if their country is endangered by such organisations, according to Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah, who made this claim a few days ago.
Ahmad Yasir, a Taliban member living in Doha, tweeted in response to Sanaullah’s claim that Afghanistan was not Syria and that Pakistan was not Turkey (in reference to Turkey’s bombing of Kurds in Syria). ‘The empires’ cemetery is located here in Afghanistan. ‘Never contemplate launching a military assault on us, or you risk experiencing the humiliating repetition of the 1971 deal with India (after the Bangladesh War)’.
Speaking at a UN event in December, Bilawal Bhutto had threatened Pakistan with direct action against TTP if cross-border terrorism from Afghanistan didn’t end. Following the Taliban takeover of Kabul, which Islamabad considered a success of its ‘strategic depth’ policy in Afghanistan, the TTP considerably increased its presence in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) tribal areas. TTP had urged Islamabad to ready itself for an onslaught in 2021, and in 2022–2023 the terror organisation is carrying it out and is back in the news.
TTP was established by the ISI with the intention of aiding the Afghan Taliban in capturing Kabul. Once that has been accomplished, the TTP’s next objective is to occupy Pakistan and establish a Taliban state there. It still poses a threat to not just the Pakistani government but also the army and local police forces. The TTP asserted in a statement released on Wednesday that ‘the Jihadi field of TTP is just Pakistan and our goal is the security agencies occupying the nation’ is known to the whole globe.
‘BIGGEST THREAT TO COUNTRY’
Since its formation in 2007, the TTP has been accountable for hundreds of assaults and thousands of fatalities while remaining distinct from the Taliban in Afghanistan but having a similar harsh ideology. The TTP issued a statement in November 2022 announcing that they had called off a truce reached with the federal government in June and had instructed their fighters to carry out terrorist strikes across the nation.
With 250 incidents that resulted in at least 719 injuries and an estimated 443 fatalities in 2022, Pakistan had a 51% increase in terror attacks. The TTP was responsible for the vast majority of these terrorist attacks. The Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), an organisation located in Islamabad, published its annual report on December 31, 2022 pointed to the emergence of the TTP as the biggest threat to the country.
In assaults that included suicide bombings, IED ambushes, and raids on security stations, particularly in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border regions, the CRSS assessment stated that Pakistani security forces lost at least 282 personnel in 2022. Pakistan has long been charged with supporting, harbouring, and abridging terrorist organisations. As the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan steps up its attacks around the nation, combating terrorism has grown to be its greatest task.
Post Your Comments