The ‘chickens are coming home to roost’ is how most experts around the world are viewing the mounting attacks by TTP against the Pakistani state. Decades of adopting jihad as a lever of regional foreign policy to keep India under check and Afghanistan under control has resulted in the calamity we face today.
Everyday new attacks take place against police or security personnel at some check post in the northern areas. The attacks are planned and coordinated and often end in a suicide bombing. The militants are often better armed, carry advanced equipment, including thermal weapon sights.
As an investigative report in Dawn noted, “Over the past few months, terrorism has been rearing its head again in the country, especially in KP and Balochistan. Pakistan has seen a rise in terrorist attacks across the country, believed to have been planned and directed by the outlawed TTP leaders based in Afghanistan. The TTP, which has ideological linkages with the Afghan Taliban, executed more than 100 attacks last year, most of which happened after August when the group’s peace talks with the Pakistan government began to falter.”
Kinetic strikes against some stray militant outposts is not the solution. The Pakistani state needs to make an internal decision that there are no good or bad terrorists and that all such groups need to be eradicated from their roots.
