terrorism in pakistan essay in urdu

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v.15(1); 2018 Feb

Terrorism in Pakistan: the psychosocial context and why it matters

Asad tamizuddin nizami.

1 Assistant Professor, Institute of Psychiatry, World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Mental Health, Benazir Bhutto Hospital, Rawalpindi Medical College, Rawalpindi, Pakistan; email moc.liamg@imazindasard

Tariq Mahmood Hassan

2 Assistant Professor, Providence Care Mental Health Services, Kingston, Canada

Sadia Yasir

3 Consultant Psychiatrist, Shifa International Hospital, Shifa College of Medicine, Islamabad, Pakistan

Mowaddat Hussain Rana

4 Director General, Centre for Trauma Research and Psychosocial Interventions, National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan

Fareed Aslam Minhas

5 Head Institute of Psychiatry, World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Mental Health, Benazir Bhutto Hospital, Rawalpindi Medical College, Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Terrorism is often construed as a well-thought-out, extreme form of violence to perceived injustices. The after effects of terrorism are usually reported without understanding the underlying psychological and social determinants of the terrorist act. Since ‘9/11’ Pakistan has been at the epicentre of both terrorism and the war against it. This special paper helps to explain the psychosocial perspective of terrorism in Pakistan that leads to violent radicalisation. It identifies the terrorist acts in the background of Pakistan's history, current geopolitical and social scenario. The findings may also act as a guide on addressing this core issue.

Most nations are unable to reach a consensus on a legally binding definition of ‘terrorism.’ The term seems emotionally charged and, as such, governments have been devising their own definitions. So far the United Nations has been unable to devise an internationally agreed-upon definition of terrorism. Terrorism is suggested to be ‘the use of intimidation or fear for advancement of political objectives’ (Kruglanski & Fishman, 2006 ). Since the ‘9/11’ incident, Muslim countries in particular feel emotionally threatened with the word terrorism and perceive it as synonymous with the acts of terror carried out by so-called Muslim extremist groups. This is further complemented in the media by the unjust linking of such horrendous terror attacks to Islamic Jihad.

Terrorism has brought an enormous burden on South Asian countries through the adverse impacts on their social, economic, political and physical infrastructure. Pakistan has suffered particularly excessively from the social, economic and human costs due to terrorism (Daraz et al , 2012 ). Surprisingly, Pakistan is portrayed as being on the front line in the international war against terrorism and at the same time has been wrongly labelled as a sponsor of international terrorism. Terrorism in Pakistan is a multidimensional phenomenon and, among many precipitating factors, the psychosocial factors play an important role. This paper attempts to address what we believe are significant psychosocial determinants to terrorism in Pakistan.

Historical developments

Pakistan is a Muslim majority nation in South East Asia with India to its east, Iran and Afghanistan to its west, China and the landlocked Asian countries to its north and the Arabian Sea to its south. Pakistan gained independence from British colonial rule in 1947 and is the only Muslim country with nuclear weapons – a nuclear device was detonated in 1998 – and is thus part of the informally named ‘nuclear club.’ Pakistan is a federation of four provinces (Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and Balochistan), a capital territory (Islamabad) and a group of federally administered tribal areas in the north west, along with the disputed area of Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

Pakistan is the world's sixth most populous country with an average population density of 229 people per km 2 (World Bank indicators; http://www.tradingeconomics.com/pakistan/urban-population-growth-annual-percent-wb-data.html ). Since independence in 1947, Pakistan has been challenged not only by the trauma inflicted by its colonial occupiers but also by the mass murder of people migrating to the ‘new’ country. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, looted, raped or burnt alive. At the same time, the stability of this fledgling country was significantly hampered by the lack of resources. Just a few years later, due to political instability and separatist movements and terrorism, the east wing of the country was separated from Pakistan; this paved the way to the creation of a new country, Bangladesh, in 1971 (Wadhwani, 2011 ).

The Soviet–Afghan war, which began in 1979, provided a breeding ground for terrorism in the region. A fundamental change was witnessed that altered the very character of the existing Pakistani society. Withdrawal of the Soviets revealed a Pakistani society that had been forced into one of violence and weaponisation, plaguing Pakistan with so-called ‘Kalashnikov culture’ and ‘Talibanisation’ (Wadhwani, 2011 ).

Pakistan's social landscape has for the most part been plagued with illiteracy, disease, insecurity and injustice. Since the 9/11 incident, Pakistan has been intricately linked with the many facets of the ‘war on terrorism.’ Some argue that Pakistan is a breeding ground for terrorist outfits, but it is certain that all of this havoc has resulted in the significant loss of innocent lives as well as loss of economic revenue. These fragile conditions provide a fertile ground for terrorism to grow.

Psychological influence

The act of carrying out terrorist activity does not come from a single moment of inspiration but rather from a complex process of cognitive accommodation and assimilation over accumulating steps. It is wrongly reductionist to label the terrorists as mad or psychopaths (Atran, 2003 ; Horgan, 2008 ). Terrorists’ motivation may involve a deep, underlying quest for personal meaning and significance. Several analyses of such motives have appeared in recent years. There are differences in these analyses regarding the type and variety of motivational factors identified as critical to terrorism. Some authors identified a singular motivation as crucial; others listed a ‘cocktail’ of motives (Sageman, 2004 ; Bloom, 2005 ).

The socioeconomic adversity combined with political challenges were bound to have a detrimental impact on the psyche of the average Pakistani. A terrorist adopts a dichotomous way of identifying their victims, the black-and-white thought that ‘I am good’ and ‘you are evil,’ with no intermediary shades of grey. This thinking leaves no doubt in their minds and they find it easier to kill their opponents with little or no sense of remorse or guilt.

The unmanned army drone strikes killed and maimed thousands of innocent civilians in poor and difficult to access regions of Pakistan. This infuriated people, leading them to take up arms against the perceived aggressors. This triggering of the relatives of the deceased to engage in such activity is the culture of revenge in Pakistan, which unfortunately can last for generations.

Self-sacrifice and martyrdom has been explicitly used in almost all religions and is aggressively exploited by terrorist outfits who groom suicide bombers using the ideology of Islamist martyrdom (Atran, 2003 ). Some have argued that suicide bombers may actually be clinically suicidal and attempting to escape personal impasse (Lankford, 2013 ). In grooming young impressionable adolescents, extremist organisations brainwash these adolescents into believing that the ultimate self-sacrifice by suicide bombing will elevate their stature in the eyes of God and send them straight to heaven. This is associated with massive financial compensations to the deceased family. Terrorist organisations in Pakistan, through this process of brainwashing, have been able to convert young impressionable Muslim adolescents into a ‘suicide bomber in six weeks’ (Nizami et al , 2014 ). In the current scenario of the existing war on terror, this complex process of recruiting young adolescents as suicide bombers seems irreversible.

The contribution of the religious schools

In the West, Madrassas (Islamic religious schools) have gained a reputation of being a sinister influence on young impressionable Muslims. These institutions are not completely regulated and can vary from a single room to large institutions offering schooling and boarding to hundreds of students at a time. A survey of just over 50 000 households in Pakistan found that children in Urdu-medium government schools and madrassas were from poorer households than those in English-medium private schools. The primary reason for parents to send their children to madrassas as opposed to mainstream schools was that these institutions provided a good Islamic education. The second most common reason was that the madrassa provided education that is low in cost along with the provision of food and clothing (Cockcroft et al , 2009 ).

Another survey indicated that in Pakistan only a minority of the religious schools promoted an extremist view of Islam (Bano, 2007 ). An interrogation of 79 terrorists involved in anti-Western attacks found that very few had attended a madrassa. This suggests that terrorist groups may selectively recruit better qualified people for technically demanding tasks (Bergen & Pandey, 2006 ). However, the religious seminaries have been implicated as playing the role of recruitment centres for the suicide bombers (Nizami et al , 2014 ).

In an effort to break this incorrect perception the Darul Uloom Deoband, the largest Islamic seminary in the world, hosted an anti-terrorist conference in 2008. This was attended by 6000 Imams declaring that ‘Islam is a religion of mercy for all humanity. Islam sternly condemns all kinds of oppression, violence and terrorism. It has regarded oppression, mischief, rioting and murder among sins and crimes’ (Press Trust of India, 2008 ). However, it is yet to be ascertained how many religious schools in Pakistan adopted this school of thought. With the revolution in the world of information technology, experts agree that the internet played an important role in the radicalisation and self-recruitment process into terrorist groups. Messages and videos on jihadi websites target the ‘soft spots’ of potential recruits and inflame their imagination (Kruglanski & Fishman, 2009 ).

The link between terrorism and mental disorder

With both mental disorder and terrorism in Pakistan being highly prevalent, it would be a fair assumption that the two may have a causal relationship. Walter Laqueur wrote that ‘all terrorists believe in conspiracies by the powerful, hostile forces and suffer from some form of delusion and persecution mania… The element of… madness plays an important role in terrorism’ (Silke, 2003 ).

However, apart from certain pathological cases, a causal connection between an individual's mental disorder and engagement in terrorist activity could not be established (Daraz et al , 2012 ). However, there can be a connection between an individual engaging in terrorist activity and developing a mental disorder as mental disorders worsen in stress, anxiety and depression.

The adverse impacts of terrorism lead the masses towards anomie and create the tendency towards suicide and mental illnesses (Daraz et al , 2012 ). Poor health, depressive symptoms, risky behaviours in young adults, personality variables, social inequalities, criminality, social networks and international foreign policy have all been proposed to be influential drivers for grievances that lead to radicalisation and terrorism (La Free & Ackerman, 2009 ).

It may well be that individuals with mild depression would be a better target for gradual psychological moulding. Female suicide bombers who are predominantly motivated by revenge as opposed to their male counterparts may have some degree of clinical depression (Jacques & Taylor, 2008 ). Personality traits are useless as predictors for understanding why people become terrorists. However, personality traits and environmental conditions are the contributing factors for terrorism (Horgan, 2008 ). There are protective and modifiable risk factors early on the path towards radicalisation. The benefits of early intervention have far reaching implications for preventing significant depressive symptoms, promoting wellbeing and perhaps social capital (Bhui et al , 2014 ).

By understanding, appreciating and addressing the psychosocial factors contributing to terrorism in Pakistan, one may find long-lasting solutions to the fall out on Pakistan's war against terror. This war has led to a loss of innocent human lives, compounded by the deep psychological scars for survivors which will undoubtedly persist for generations to come. An ongoing, concerted effort to gain peace and security in the region is essential and is the only way to counteract the revenge attacks and further brainwashing of young impressionable youths. These psychological determinants, however, are markedly different than terrorist activities in Western countries, where it seems that a different set of psychological rules apply.

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Extremism and Terrorism Trends in Pakistan: Changing Dynamics and New Challenges

February 2021, volume 14, issue 2.

Hassan Abbas

Abstract: Even as Pakistan has made progress in reducing the threat from terrorist sanctuaries in the Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal areas, an increased crime-terror nexus in urban centers and a new terrorist recruitment drive by Islamic State Khorasan province, or ISK, in Baluchistan has raised alarms. Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is trying to stage a comeback, and sectarianism is also rising, creating a congenial environment for terrorist and extremist organizations, including some Kashmir-focused groups that have evaded counterterrorism scrutiny. Pakistan’s poor investment in developing a much-needed countering violent extremism strategy makes it ill-equipped to respond to these challenges.

Terrorism in Pakistan is down, but by no means out. The number of terror attacks and the number of resulting fatalities have started to tick up again; sectarianism is growing and the causes feeding into radicalization of the population not only continue to exist but, in some instances, are aggravating the problem. The revival of the Afghan Taliban since its nadir in the fall of 2001 coupled with the striking emergence and resilient footprint of the Islamic State Khorasan province, or ISK, in adjacent Afghanistan, in parallel with the rise of Hindu nationalism in neighboring India, indicate worsening extremism trends in South Asia overall. The fact that various groups continue to enjoy immunity from state clampdowns adds a further layer of complexity to the challenge. South Asia has recorded more deaths from terrorism than any other region of the world for two consecutive years now—2018 and 2019. 1 Granted, this is partly due to a noteworthy decline in fatalities in the Syria and Iraq conflict theaters, yet it shows that terrorism in South Asia remains a very serious challenge. In terms of measuring the impact of terrorism, the 2020 Global Terrorism Index prepared by Australia’s Institute for Economics and Peace ranks Pakistan seventh (for greatest impact), right after Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen (in that order) and followed by India, Congo, and the Philippines. To have Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan continue to hold a position in the top 10 in this category is not an encouraging sign for regional counterterrorism efforts. 2 The complicated relationships between these three countries are also factors at play.

In comparative terms, according to data from the Global Terrorism Index, terrorism attacks have declined since 2018 in Pakistan, as the total number of terrorist incidents dropped from 369 (causing 543 deaths) in 2018 to 279 (causing 300 deaths) in 2019, bringing the number of deaths from terrorism in Pakistan to its lowest annual number since 2006. 3 The Global Terrorism Index has not made data available yet for Pakistan in 2020. According to the South Asia Terrorism portal (SATP), there were 319 terrorism related incidents in Pakistan in 2020. 4 According to Pakistan’s National Counterterrorism Authority (NACTA), terrorism attacks caused 357 deaths in Pakistan in 2020 (through December 21), a clear increase in the number of victims of terrorism from the previous year. 5

While terrorism incident data reflects a generally positive counterterrorism trend, the underlying radicalization trends and lack of evidence that elements active in terrorist organizations (such as Kashmir-focused Jaish-e-Mohammad) have been brought to justice in some shape or form continue to raise legitimate concerns. Measuring extremism is harder as it requires a broader set of data ranging from hate crimes, health of minorities’ rights, youth radicalization trends, and sectarian tendencies. Local security analysts, independent Pakistan watchers, and those with access to relevant data are mostly worried about Pakistan’s direction. The survival of ISK in Afghanistan and Pakistan, despite enhanced counterterrorism operations, is one example of the persistence of the terrorism problem in the region. As Amira Jadoon and Andrew Mines insightfully conclude, this is a result of ISK’s “wide network of operational alliances in directly enhancing its lethality and geographical reach” as well as “access to a steady supply of experienced militants on both sides of the border.” 6 A new generation of extremist recruits today is enhancing this capacity.

This article looks specifically at terrorism and extremism trends in Pakistan with a focus on relatively new developments that are deemed worthy of deeper analysis and attention. This article examines five dimensions of the terrorism threat faced by Pakistan. It first look at TTP’s efforts to stage a comeback in Pakistan. It then looks at ISK’s new recruitment strategy. Then it examines the upsurge in targeted killings in Karachi. The next section focuses on the evolving threat posed by Kashmiri-focused militant groups. The final section outlines the challenges posed by rising violent sectarianism inside Pakistan. This study benefits from interviews and conversations the author conducted in October-December 2020 with many security and law enforcement officials in Karachi, Kabul, Lahore, and Peshawar.

Pakistani Taliban Regaining Foothold in the Pakistan-Afghanistan Border Areas First, credit is due to Pakistan’s security forces for terminating the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) reign of terror (roughly 2007-2015) through its effective Operation Zarb-e-Azb launched in June 2014. The U.S. drone campaign’s success in decapitating TTP leadership facilitated it in no small way. 7 TTP splintered thereafter, and its surviving leaders escaped to Afghanistan. 8 Some of its splinter factions either merged into ISK or pledged allegiance to it. 9 The TTP’s most lethal splinter Jamaat ul Ahrar (JuA), in collaboration with TTP’s Tariq Gidar Group, was responsible for major terrorist attacks, including on Army Public School in Peshawar in December 2014. a It survived energized Pakistani counterterrorism operations and has continued its terror operations from its new base in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar area. 10

Many of these splinter groups, including JuA and Hizb ul- Ahrar (HuA), decided to come together again in August 2020 and renewed their pledge of allegiance to current TTP leader Noor Wali Mehsud, alias Abu Mansour Asim. 11 HuA, especially, has an agile terror network in and around the Peshawar region. 12 The return of a Mehsud as the TTP leader also persuaded many disgruntled Mehsud tribesmen (such as members of the Hakimullah Mehsud group, led by Mukhlis Yar) to return to the TTP fold. 13 Even Punjabi Taliban’s Amjad Farouqi group, closely aligned with al-Qa`ida, and the Usman Saifullah group, a Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) splinter, also returned to the TTP platform. 14 The latest to rejoin this notorious gang of terrorists in late November 2020 was influential Ustad Aleem Khan (from the Gul Bahadur TTP faction) and Umar Azzam. 15 TTP is proudly marketing the video of this allegiance through its media outlet Umar Media. 16

According to a May 2020 UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team report, the number of Pakistani militants of all stripes operating in Afghanistan may be as high as 6,000 to 6,500. 17 A great majority of them will likely drift back into Pakistan if TTP regains control in parts of the Pashtun tribal belt sandwiched between Pakistan and Afghanistan. This area was known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan (FATA), but has been legally incorporated into Khyber Pukhtunkhwa (KPK) province since 2018. A U.N. report published in February 2021 maintains that TTP was responsible for more than 100 cross-border attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan between July and October 2020. 18

A significant increase in targeted killings in the Pakistani tribal areas during 2020 carried out by terrorist groups indicates that something is amiss. Those targeted lately are tribal elders (senior leaders), reminiscent of times when TTP emerged in 2007 and eliminated hundreds of them. 19 Analyst Daud Khattak maintains that increased targeted killings in Waziristan and Bajaur tribal districts are caused by TTP’s “involvement in resolving local disputes, forcing people to pay protection money, and targeting those believed to be their opponents.” 20 This was how they gained space in the tribal belt more than a decade ago. 21 Al-Qa`ida in Iraq (AQI) did the same in Iraq over a decade and a half ago, showing how terrorist organizations may be learning from each other and why timely comparative analysis of such campaigns can help counterterrorism efforts. According to Pakistani security analyst Amir Rana, by mid-December 2020, about 11 splinter groups had joined this reconfigured TTP, and attacks on security forces in South and North Waziristan, and in Bajaur and Mohmand areas—an old stronghold of TTP—have increased. 22 Pakistan’s speedy effort to complete fencing work on the border with Afghanistan, with a goal to discourage militant movement, smuggling, and illegal crossings, has possibly convinced some TTP elements to return to Pakistan from Afghanistan while they can. 23 Rustam Shah Mohmand argues that prospects of a negotiated deal in Afghanistan between Kabul and the Afghan Taliban may mean restricted space for TTP types in Afghanistan, and hence, they have started returning to Pakistan. 24

One of the major reasons behind TTP’s resurgence as a serious threat, however, is Islamabad’s lackluster effort toward bringing the FATA into the mainstream as envisioned by the 2018 FATA Reforms Bill, a major constitutional initiative. 25 The FATA was merged into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province through this belated but commendable legal initiative, on paper abolishing the draconian colonial-era regulations governing the frontier area. The legal, administrative, and financial measures needed to facilitate this process, however, are absent, or seriously lacking, in turn provoking a rise in public frustrations. 26 A pertinent example is the recent rise of the Pashtun Tahafuz (Protection) Movement (PTM) led by Manzoor Pashteen, a revolutionary but non-violent protest movement demanding an end to extrajudicial killings in the area by security forces and the elimination of military check posts that restrict the free movement of people. PTM pleads for Pashtun rights, maintaining that the lives of ordinary Pashtuns have been disrupted over the last two decades on a massive scale and that they are victims of both the Taliban and the security forces. 27 TTP also used similar criticism of security forces to gain public sympathy, but PTM emphasizes a non-violent approach, distinguishing it from militant organizations.

PTM’s genuine but provocative slogans condemning the role of the Pakistan Army, however, resulted in Pakistani governing authorities publicly presenting it as a threat. To the contrary, it could be argued that PTM should have been welcomed by Islamabad as an ally against the extremist and radical ideologies propagated in the tribal areas, but short-sightedness served as an obstacle to such an understanding. PTM’s popularity across Pashtun communities from Peshawar to Karachi appears to be rising despite the military’s effort to contain the group’s reach. 28 A few of the PTM’s leading lights made it into the parliament but that did not prevent them from being depicted as ‘Indian agents’ or ‘enemies of the state,’ charges that are unfortunate and unfounded. 29 In fact, Pakistani security forces hired criminal elements and extremist elements to confront PTM on the ground, as explained by Ali Wazir, currently an elected member of Pakistan’s National Assembly and one of the co-founders of the movement:

It is ironic that the institutions responsible for protecting Pakistan’s territorial integrity and protecting it from dangerous threats are bankrolling thugs to launch a Pakistan Zindabad Movement (Urdu for Long Live Pakistan Movement) … It is telling that former Taliban commanders have addressed their gatherings. We also have indications that efforts are underway to mobilize sectarian terrorists and other fanatics to ‘counter’ our peaceful campaign. 30

Popular Pakistani columnist Nadeem Paracha calls PTM “a contemporary version of classical Pashtun nationalism” that was “overshadowed by the rise of political Islam and then militancy among various Pashtun tribes.” 31 There are indeed elements of nationalist fervor in PTM’s narrative, but its primary focus is on human rights and rule of law and their leaders insist: “We have created a golden opportunity for Islamabad to shun its past as a security state and function as a normal country concerned with the welfare of its citizens.” 32 But arrests, kidnapping, and intimidation of PTM supporters and followers at the hands of state agencies continue. 33 TTP and other extremists in tribal areas must be relieved to see intelligence services and their proxies getting embroiled into confrontation with PTM rather than confronting TTP ideology and activities.

ISK Expanded Recruitment Drive Targeting Baluchistan’s Brahui Ethnic Group ISK, which had emerged around 2015 in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region as an extension of the Iraq- and Syria-based Islamic State, in its early days had greatly benefitted from a stream of defections from many regional militant organizations. 34 That process has run its course, it appears. Today, ISK is under stress due to regular elimination of its top leadership at the hands of Afghan and U.S. forces, and it is now experimenting with a model that includes a broader recruitment focus as well as the appointment of a foreigner, Shahab al-Muhajir, as its top leader. 35 b Some changes in this direction were visible in early 2020, as evident by the recruitment of militants from the Indian state of Kerala who were then used to target a Sikh place of worship in Kabul. 36 The more terrorist groups are able to recruit from a particular area, the easier it becomes for them to recruit there because of their deepening local ties, but expanding recruitment to different ethnicities requires wider network and training needs (given linguistic and cultural factors).

As part of its broader recruitment focus, ISK is now likely looking to expand its recruitment efforts in the Brahui (or Brohi) ethnic community in the Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. 37 While only a small fraction of Brahuis have any sympathy for ISK, a number have been recruited into its terror campaign. For instance, the masterminds of terrorist attacks targeting a popular Sufi Shrine in Sehwan, Sindh province (2017), a police training center in Quetta, Baluchistan, and many Islamic centers associated with Shi`a communities in the Sindh province turned out to be Brahui militants by the name of Hafeez Pandrani Brohi and Abdullah Brohi, both killed in police encounters in 2019. 38 In the case of the Sehwan attack, one of the two suicide bombers was also from Brahui background, namely Barar Brohi. 39

Pakistani officials believe that ISK cells are “predominantly present in the border areas of Baluchistan,” and the group keeps the size of these cells small as a strategy for securing their communications and target planning. 40

The primary local partner of ISK in Pakistan remains Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami (LeJA), an offshoot of the terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) known widely for its targeting of Shi`a communities across the country. 41 While LeJ terrorist operations have been focused internally in Pakistan, the LeJA has aspired to operate regionally as its extended title al-Alami, meaning ‘international,’ suggests. More specifically, LeJA has attracted the most notorious of the LeJ cadre who were also more aggressive in their approach. Their parent ideological organization, defunct Sipah-e-Sahaba—now operating as Ahle Sunnat Wal Jammat (ASWJ)—is also operating in Baluchistan, and there are strong allegations of its involvement in terrorist attacks targeting the Shi`a Hazara community in Quetta. Ramzan Mengal (ethnically Brahui), the top leader of ASWJ in Baluchistan, openly campaigned for the killing of Shi`a in the past but remains free and was even permitted to contest national elections in 2018. 42

The Brahui factor needs further explanation to get across some important nuances. c The Brahui are distinct from Baluch in the anthropological sense, but they mutually share Baluch political identity and also support the cause of Baluch nationalism. 43 Brahui tribes, however, are more conservative and tribal in terms of their network and outlook as compared to other ethnicities and are generally lagging behind in the economic and educational domains. 44 They are in the majority in Khuzdar, Kalat, and Mastung districts but also have a significant presence in the Quetta, Noshki, and Kharan districts of Baluchistan as well as in some Sindh districts including Shikarpur, Jacobabad, and Qambar Shahdatkot. An important distinguishing feature of Brahui identity is their religious inclinations. Brahui areas host most of the madrassas (Islamic seminaries), and most prayer leaders in the province consequently are from Brahui background. That in itself is not worthy of security concern, but the fact remains that extremist groups have had opportunities to recruit through madrassas in this area.

Since its inception in 2010, 45 LeJA has made strategic inroads into Brahui-dominant areas in Baluchistan as well as Sindh province. One leading indicator of this was the trajectory of the terrorist leader Hafeez Pandrani Brohi (mentioned above), hailing originally from Baluchistan’s Mastung district and trained initially by LeJ. 46 Pakistani intelligence services, or some sectarian elements within it, possibly facilitated LeJ’s move to Baluchistan to confront the Baluch nationalists, especially Baluch Liberation Army (BLA), around the 2007-2010 timeframe. Scholar Stephen Tankel in his 2013 paper on militant infrastructure in Pakistan maintained that, “Rumors persist about Pakistani military support for LeJ militants in Balochistan to degrade the separatist insurgency in that province. There is no evidence of an institutionalized policy, however, and the military has denied these charges vociferously. It is possible some officers overlook or abet LeJ activities because they are seen as targeting enemies of the state.” 47

Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Pakistani journalist known for his in-depth stories about the Taliban and other extremist groups, aptly argues, “Call it infiltration, or what you will, but the LeJ has succeeded in recruiting Baloch, once considered quite secular.” 48 According to reliable media accounts in Pakistan, LeJ training camps were run in the second half of the 2000s from Mastung and Khuzdar in Pakistan. 49

The fact that many LeJ (and LeJA) militants have been able to escape from police and even military custody in Baluchistan has reinforced the view that there is an ongoing LeJ-security forces linkage. 50 The recurrence of such escapes (and from high security zone detention facilities) has further entrenched the view that official support was involved.

Shafiq Mengal (ethnically Brahui), an LeJ militant known as a “pawn set by the intelligence agencies to counter Baloch militants in the province,” is an example of a religious extremist turned national asset of Pakistani intelligence. 51 Tariq Khosa, former Inspector General of Police of Baluchistan and a brave writer, laments state backing for private militias and aptly argues that “the decision to use Shafiq as a proxy against certain Baloch separatist organizations allowed proscribed sectarian groups to regroup in and around Quetta.” 52 Rafique Mengal, another LeJ terrorist who was found involved in many killings of Hazara Shi`a in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, received state protection, at least in the early 2010s, for his political work against Baluch nationalists. 53 Such state blunders continue to empower groups that widen sectarian rifts and open the doors for groups such as ISK to expand their terror networks in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s law enforcement agencies are very concerned about the recruitment drive of ISK-LeJA targeting the Brahui-dominated areas, and as discussed, this trend is also visible from publicly available data. 54 This indicates at the least that the ISK-LeJA tandem is looking for opportunities to exploit. LeJ used to get most of its recruits from south Punjab—a critical hub for many extremist organizations in Pakistan—so its move via its LeJA offshoot to Baluchistan (in alliance with ISK) is a development worth taking note of and probing further.

A likely motivating factor for ISK’s enhanced recruitment drive in Baluchistan is the high number of clashes between the Afghan Taliban (mostly Pashtun) and ISK occurring in Afghanistan’s Kunar and Nangahar provinces bordering Pakistan. This area is important for ISK as it hosts its central operational base. Given Pakistan’s past practice and presumed support for the Afghan Taliban in these campaigns, ISK’s retaliation through terror acts in Pakistan is highly probable. To pull off such a terror campaign, it is possible ISK will seek to step up the deployment of Brahui violent extremists as one way to both leverage and aggravate Baluch-Brahui versus Pashtun rivalries in the area.

The evolving nature of the Afghan Taliban-ISK war is evident from the October 27, 2020, ISK terror attack in Peshawar targeting a seminary led by Shaikh Rahim ullah Haqqani, a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, who had publicly declared followers of ISK as enemies of Islam. 55 Haqqani’s lecture was being livestreamed when the attack occurred, leading to the death of eight students while 136 were wounded. 56 Another Afghan Taliban commander, Abdul Samad Mullah Toor, was assassinated by unknown assailants in the outskirts of Peshawar, on January 24, 2021. 57

Targeted Killings in Karachi Pakistani security experts believe that a new generation of religious militants is coming of age in Pakistan, and these tech-savvy individuals are mostly based in urban centers such as Karachi and Lahore. 58 In ideological terms, this pool of individuals harbors salafi-takfiri leanings, ever ready to excommunicate Muslims who are different from them, and they have relatively little baggage in terms of inter-group rivalries as was the case with those who participated in the ‘Afghan Jihad’ of the 1980s. 59 These individuals are more global in their outlook and ambitions, and are largely radicalized through online sources. 60 d

A rise in targeted killings by extremists in Karachi during 2020 raised serious concerns within Pakistani security agencies about the increased activities of some local extremist groups, some with transnational connections, that they were not tracking closely. 61 A senior counterterrorism department officer in Islamabad shared with the author that based on data from Karachi police, they have concluded that four terrorist groups allied with local criminal gangs are quite active in Karachi and Sindh province lately: ‘Lyari gang,’ a Karachi-based criminal network; 62 elements of Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA), a designated terrorist outfit with its base in Baluchistan province; 63 Sindhudesh Revolutionary Army, a relatively new, shadowy group; 64 and criminal elements from the Altaf-led faction Muttihada Qaumi Movement (MQM-A), a political party that has splintered into many factions since its London-based leadership were declared personae non gratae by many leaders of the party as well as Pakistani security agencies for their involvement in criminal activities and alleged ties with Indian intelligence. 65 Many criminal elements from MQM-A escaped Pakistan and now reportedly hide in South Africa. 66 It is important to clarify that some of the four Karachi groups specified above have been in existence for many years, but lately they have been more active than usual according to local police assessments. The author’s conversations with police officials in Karachi indicate that many of the underground jihadis are found involved in narcotics smuggling activity and Sindh and Punjab police forces are closely monitoring this trend. 67

Cracking down on these Karachi groups will in some cases need to be an international endeavor. The United Arab Emirates remains a destination for many criminals from the Karachi area and other parts of Pakistan. 68 For instance, the prime suspect in the attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi in November 2018, named Rashid Brohi and belonging to BLA, was arrested in July 2019 in UAE by Interpol. 69

The Evolving Threat Posed by Kashmiri-focused Groups The activities of Kashmir-focused militant groups and other organizations that aspire to be active in Indian-controlled Kashmir remain a concern. There are no indications that groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) led by the notorious Masood Azhar have been decommissioned. 70

In early 2020, a Urdu-language magazine managed by al-Qa`ida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), titled Nawa-e-Ghazwa-e-Hind (roughly Voice of the Battlefield of India), started campaigning for focus on Kashmir, raising alarm bells in India. 71 The latest edition (January 2021) of this magazine not only carries articles on Kashmir but its language and content clearly indicates that it is published by ‘battle hardened’ militants with experience in Kashmir and Afghanistan. e

While Kashmir-focused militant groups are generally keeping a low profile within Pakistan (likely due to the hanging sword of ‘Financial Action Task Force’ on Islamabad’s head), f there is a real danger that some elements that differ with this quietism strategy may join AQIS. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan warned his countrymen against any effort to “wage Jihad in Kashmir” and cautioned them by saying: “Anyone, who thinks that he will cross the border to join the Kashmiris, is a big enemy of them and Pakistan.” 72 This indicates resolve on the part of political leadership at least. There is no credible evidence that AQIS is operating in Kashmir at this time, but its publications clearly show intent and motivation to do so.

Many of these Kashmir-focused Pakistani militants, as is known from their track record, jump between groups depending on geopolitics and security vulnerabilities. The mood of intelligence agencies is also kept in view.

Deepening Sectarianism Sunni-Shi`a sectarianism, mostly anti-Shi`a platforms, has long been exploited by violent extremist groups in Pakistan, and as outlined below, it is once again on the rise. Lately, Pakistan’s Ahmadi community has also been on the receiving end as there has been a recent spike in targeted killing against them. 73 The intra-Sunni Barelvi-Deobandi rivalry also continues to simmer hazardously in the background, as Tehrike-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a radical Barelvi group, has energized its base by insisting on the strict implementation of Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws. In the process, it is regaining the political ground it had lost to the Deobandis “since the rise of jihadism in the 1980s.” 74

Disturbingly, recent months have seen heightened anti-Shi`a rhetoric expressed through major street protests, involving ultra conservative political forces, in Karachi and Islamabad. 75 Sectarian and extremist ASWJ played an active role in this campaign. 76 These street protests could lead to even more sectarianism, which has proved in the past to have empowered terrorists of all stripes in Pakistan besides widening the door for Saudi-versus-Iran games to be played in the country. 77 Islamic State-like organizations also thrive where sectarian tensions are high. An editorial of Pakistan’s leading newspaper Dawn captured the gist of this development well:

The embers of hate are once again being stoked. To prevent history from being repeated and innocent blood spilled in the name of religion, the government must act urgently and decisively. The state’s silence is indeed inexplicable. It appears to have willfully chosen to close its eyes to this sinister development. 78

Pakistan’s Shi`a Hazara, located mostly in Quetta, continue to pay a heavy price. 2021 began for them with the brutal murder of 11 Hazara coal miners who were kidnapped and their throats slit. Gruesome images of the victims were distributed through the Islamic State’s Amaq news service. 79 The Pakistani security analyst Amir Rana, in making security projections for Pakistan for 2021, aptly observes that “incidents of communal violence and religious and sectarian hatred have become a regular feature of Pakistan’s security and political landscape” and “sectarian discord and the groups promoting it continue to persist.” 80

Conclusion As this article has outlined, Pakistan’s counterterrorism challenges are evolving. While there is relative stability in the Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal belt and the overall violence levels have dropped since 2018, the TTP in particular are assertively trying to regroup and stage a comeback. While their infrastructure has been degraded earlier, nothing tangible was done to challenge the extremists’ ideology of hate. Countering violent extremism efforts have remained limited in focus and poorly resourced. 81 Economic failings and disparities in Pakistan have also offered opportunities for ISK terrorists to target vulnerable communities for recruitment, such as the Brahui in Baluchistan. ISK is a serious danger for South Asia, and its potential to grow further should not be underestimated. ISK’s creation of two subdivisions, namely Islamic State-Hind and Islamic State-Pakistan, in 2019 reflect its ambitions in the region. 82 Islamabad’s policy of looking for proxies to fight insurgents and extremists has backfired. 83 And the Kashmir-focused militants, though quieter and keeping a low profile since 2017, could also come out of their hibernation—on the state’s behalf or possibly on their own out of frustration—redirecting their energies toward India, which could lead to India-Pakistan military conflict. Heightened sectarianism also complicates Pakistan’s security scene. As Tariq Parvez, a seasoned Pakistani counterterrorism expert and former head of NACTA, argues:

The current resurgence of violent sectarianism in Pakistan is much more dangerous than the sectarianism in earlier decades, due to 3 factors, i.e. Barelvis joining them, Shia/Sunni returnees from Syria, and TTP/ISK/LeJ combo to attack each other. Government must react promptly and firmly. 84

The economic burden of dealing with COVID-19 is only going to make Pakistan’s counterterrorism challenges harder. While threats of suicide bombings in urban centers and terrorist attacks targeting progressive political leaders have receded relatively speaking, religious intolerance and threats to minority groups continue as serious problems. In the author’s assessment based on his field research, Pakistan’s criminal justice system, and especially its police, lacks the capacity and resources to serve as the first line of defense against terrorism. 85 The present government of Pakistan under Prime Minister Imran Khan, despite its promises, 86 has failed to introduce police reforms. Afzal Shigri, a former inspector general of the police and an advocate for rule of law, warns that this will have “horrendous impact on the future governance and politics of Pakistan.” 87 The five dimensions to the terrorist threat discussed in this article will only grow in magnitude and lethality if they remain untreated.

Pakistani officials appear to be more prone to dismissing these challenges as externally induced efforts g to disrupt the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). h While regional rivalries and tensions are a reality, the hard truth is that the state of Pakistan has invested very little in its countering violent extremism campaigns and deradicalization programs. One potentially beneficial initiative recently introduced pertains to intelligence coordination, bringing all civilian and military intelligence agencies under one umbrella. 88 However, equally crucial is coordination—and in some cases, mutual trust—between the country’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and that remains a weak link in Pakistan’s counterterrorism efforts. 89

Terrorists with a regional and global mission are constantly looking for opportunities to exploit, and Pakistan, having paid dearly in the past for its mistakes, needs to take these challenges very seriously. The infrastructure development projects under CPEC, as well as economic growth prospects, are at stake. Pakistan simply cannot afford to return to the old days when terrorism bogged it down almost completely, arresting its potential and progress. CTC

Hassan Abbas is Distinguished Professor of International Relations at Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies (NESA) at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. He is the author of the forthcoming The Prophet’s Heir: The Life of Ali ibn Abi Talib (Yale University Press, March 2021). Twitter: @watandost

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Defense University or the Department of Defense.

® 2021 Hassan Abbas

Substantive Notes [a] According to the ISIL and Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee of the United Nations Security Council, the attack was conducted by Tariq Gidar Group (TGG) in association with al-Qa`ida and in conjunction with or on behalf of JuA, TTP, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). See “Tariq Gidar Group (TGG),” United Nations Security Council.

[b] There is still some speculation that Shahab al-Muhajir is a Pakistani, Afghan, or even a Tajik per some sources and that the name (with the addition of al-Muhajir, meaning immigrant/refugee) is an attempt to hide his local roots. See “Andrabi claims new Daesh leader is a Haqqani member,” Ariana News, August 4, 2020.

[c] The author is grateful to Baluch-American journalist Siraj Akbar for helping him understand these nuances. The framing, however, is the author’s. Author interview, Siraj Akbar, December 2020.

[d] It is important to note, however, that many established and older extremist groups continue to recruit and expand their network through physical contact and through extremist religious gatherings and printed publications.

[e] The magazine Nawa-e-Ghazwa-e-Hind was earlier titled Nawai Afghan Jihad (The Voice of Afghan Jihad) and has been printed continuously for the last 14 years, as claimed on its contents page.

[f] The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog. FATF added Pakistan to its grey list in June 2018, indicating “strategic weaknesses” in Pakistan’s countering money laundering and terror financing efforts. To avoid moving onto the FATF black list, Pakistan was asked to take a series of measures (27 actions to be specific). By October 2020, Pakistan was deemed to have taken action on 21 out of 27 specified areas, and its progress is still being reviewed by FATF. For details, see “Explained: FATF, Pakistan and the ‘Grey List,’” WIRE, October 24, 2020. For Pakistan’s progress, see “Mutual Evaluation of Pakistan,” Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering, September 2020.

[g] In November 2020, Pakistan claimed it had “irrefutable evidence” that India was behind some terrorist activity in Pakistan. India has refuted this claim. Naveed Siddiqui, “Irrefutable evidence: Dossier on India’s sponsorship of state terrorism in Pakistan presented,” Dawn , November 14, 2020; Avinash Paliwal, “The strategic value of a dead dossier,” Observer Research Foundation, November 27, 2020.

[h] The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, benefiting from a multi-billion dollar Chinese investment, extends the land and maritime routes that connect the two countries through Gwadar port and a network of approximately 2,000 miles of railways, roads, and pipelines. For original plan details, see Khurram Husain, “Exclusive: CPEC master plan revealed,” Dawn , June 21, 2017; Andrew Small, “Returning to the Shadows: China. Pakistan and the Fate of CPEC,” German Marshall Fund of the United States, September 23, 2020.

Citations [1] “Global Terrorism Index 2020: Measuring the Impact of Terrorism,” Institute for Economics and Peace, Sydney, November 2020, p. 2.

[2] Ibid., p. 8.

[3] Ibid., p. 50.

[4] “Number of Terrorism Related Incidents Year Wise, Datasheet – Pakistan,” South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), accessed February 11, 2021.

[5] Amir Wasim, “Fazl among 20 politicians facing ‘serious threats to life’: minister,” Dawn , December 22, 2020.

[6] Amira Jadoon and Andrew Mines, Broken but Not defeated: An Examination of State-led Operations against Islamic State Khorasan in Afghanistan and Pakistan (2015-2018) (West Point, NY: Combating Terrorism Center, 2020), p. VI.

[7] For a discussion about the broader impact of the U.S. drone campaign, see Hassan Abbas, “Are Drone Strikes Killing Terrorists or Creating Them?” Atlantic , March 31, 2013.

[8] Asad Hashim “Exclusive: Pakistani Taliban down but not out, says ex-spokesman,” Al Jazeera, April 3, 2020. See also Umair Jamal, “Are US Forces Striking Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Members in Afghanistan for Islamabad?” Diplomat, February 14, 2020.

[9] For details, see Amira Jadoon, Allied and Lethal: Islamic State Khorasan’s Network and Organizational Capacity in Afghanistan and Pakistan (West Point, NY: Combating Terrorism Center, 2018), pp. 35-36, 54-58.

[10] See “Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA),” United Nations Security Council.

[11] Daud Khattak, “Whither the Pakistani Taliban: An Assessment of Recent Trends,” New America, August 31, 2020.

[12] Author interview, senior police officer in Peshawar, October 2020.

[13] Khattak.

[14] “Twenty-fifth report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team submitted pursuant to resolution 2368 (2017) concerning ISIL (Da’esh), Al-Qaida and associated individuals and entities,” United Nations, January 20, 2020.

[15] “Shamali Waziristan se Taaluk rakhne wale do Taliban groupon ka TTP se Ittehad Ka Elaan,” Tribal News , November 28, 2020.

[16] “Allegiance of two popular North Waziristan’s Jihadi organizations’ leaders, Maulvi Aleem Khan and Commander Ghazi Omar Azzam, to TTP leader Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud,” Umar Media video, November 27, 2020. For a detailed assessment of this development, see Abdul Sayed, “Waziristan Militant Leader Aleem Khan Ustad Joins Tehreek-e-Taliban,” Militant Leadership Monitor 11:12 (2021).

[17] “Eleventh report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team submitted pursuant to resolution 2501 (2019) concerning the Taliban and other associated individuals and entities constituting a threat to the peace, stability and security of Afghanistan,” United Nations Security Council, May 19, 2020, p. 20.

[18] “Twenty-fifth report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring.”

[19] “Four tribal elders shot dead in North Waziristan,” The News , December 1, 2020. See also “Two More Tribal Elders Shot Dead In Northwestern Pakistan; Six Total Killed This Week,” Gandhara, December 2, 2020.

[20] Khattak.

[21] For background, see Hassan Abbas, “A Profile of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan,” CTC Sentinel 1:2 (2008) and Hassan Abbas, “From FATA to the NWFP,” CTC Sentinel 1:10 (2008).

[22] “Kya Qabaeli Azlaa main dahshatgard phir saar Utha rahee hain [Are terrorists again raising their heads in Tribal districts],” Urdu interview with Amir Rana, Rifatullah Orakzai YouTube Channel, December 15, 2020.

[23] For details about border fencing, see Ayaz Gul, “Pakistan says Afghan Border Fence Nearly Complete,” Voice of America, December 4, 2020.

[24] Rustam Shah Mohmand, “Why attacks surge in northwest Pakistan,” Arab News , September 24, 2020.

[25] For details, see “Shaping a New Peace in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas,” ICG Report No. 150 , August 20, 2018.

[26] Author interview, Imtiaz Ali, December 2020. For detail about change in FATA legal status in merger into KPK province, see Imtiaz Ali, “Mainstreaming Pakistan’s Federally Administrative Tribal Areas: Reform Initiatives and Roadblocks,” USIP Special Report 421 , March 2018, and Wajeeha Malik and Shakeeb Asrar, “Post-Merger Inaction in FATA: Expectations Vs. Reality,” South Asian Voices, July 10, 2019.

[27] For instance, see Abubakar Siddiqui, “Leader’s Arrest Galvanizes Pashtun Rights Movement in Pakistan,” Gandhara, January 30, 2020.

[28] See Madiha Afzal, “Why is Pakistan’s military repressing a huge, non-violent Pashtun protest movement?” Brookings, February 7, 2020.

[29] “Radio Pak claims MNAs Dawar, Wazir ‘fulfilling vested Indian agenda through Afghanistan,’” Dawn , March 10, 2020. See also Hasib Danish Alikozai, “Pakistani Activist Rejects Charges Foreign Spying Agencies Funding His Group,” Voice of America, May 7, 2019.

[30] Quoted in Ali Wazir, “What Does the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement Want?” Diplomat, April 27, 2018.

[31] Nadeem F. Paracha, “Smoker’s Corner: How Should the State Deal with PTM?” Dawn , February 3, 2020.

[32] Ibid. See also Mohsin Dawar, “Opinion: We are peacefully demanding change in Pakistan. The military says we’re ‘traitors,’” Washington Post , February 14, 2020.

[33] For instance, see “Peshawar police arrest MNA Ali Wazir,” The News , December 16, 2020. See also Mohsin Dawar, “Pashtuns’ struggle for rights cannot be silenced through violence,” Al Jazeera, June 20, 2020.

[34] For details, see Amira Jadoon, Nakissa Jahanbani, and Charmaine Willis, “Challenging the ISK Brand in Afghanistan-Pakistan: Rivalries and Divided Loyalties,” CTC Sentinel 11:4 (2018).

[35] Abdul Sayed, “Who is the New Leader of Islamic State – Khorasan Province?” Lawfare, September 2, 2020.

[36] For details, see Animesh Roul, “Islamic State-Khorasan Remains Potent Force in Afghan Jihad,” Terrorism Monitor 8:11 (2020).

[37] Assessment based on multiple author interviews with security (counterterrorism) officials serving in Quetta and Karachi, October 2020.

[38] “Mastermind of several major terror attacks killed in encounter,” Dawn , March 1, 2019. See also Hafeez Tunio, “Two high-profile Daesh terrorists killed in encounter,” Express Tribune , March 1, 2019.

[39] Naeem Sahoutara, “Two ‘IS militants’ get death on 70 counts in Qalandar shrine suicide blast case,” Dawn , May 19, 2020.

[40] Kunwar Khuldune Shahid, “ISIS schemes with jihadist groups in Pakistan,” Asia Times , November 27, 2019.

[41] For background, see Farhan Zahid, “Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami: A Pakistani partner for Islamic State,” Terrorism Monitor 15:2 (2017). See also Jadoon, Allied and Lethal , pp. 40-41, 50-51.

[42] Gul Yousafzai, “Minority Hazaras in Pakistan protest for third day after Quetta attack,” Reuters, April 14, 2019; See also Asad Hashim, “Quetta Hazaras despair as religious supremacists contest elections,” Al Jazeera, July 15, 2018.

[43] See Haris Gazdar, Sobia Ahmad Kaker, and Irfan Khan, “Buffer Zone, Colonial Enclave or Urban Hub? Quetta: Between Four Regions and Two Wars,” Working Paper no. 69, Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics, February 2010.

[44] Author interview, Malik Siraj Akbar, December 2020.

[45] See “Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Al Alami,” Mapping Militant Organizations, Stanford University. For a detailed profile of LeJ, see “Lashkar-e-Jhangvi,” Mapping Militant Organizations, Stanford University.

[46] See Syed Arfeen, “The Hunt for Hafeez Brohi,” Friday Times , February 24, 2017. See also Zia Ur Rehman, “Militant North of the Country’s South,” News on Sunday , December 9, 2018.

[47] Stephen Tankel, “Domestic Barriers to Dismantling the Militant Infrastructure in Pakistan,” United States Institute of Peace, September 2013.

[48] Zofeen T. Ebrahim, “Hazara Killers – supported from Punjab to the Middle East,” Dawn , February 13, 2013.

[50] For instance, see “Usman Kurd, the man who caused fall of Raisani govt,” The News , January 15, 2013.

[51] Saher Baloch, “Herald Exclusive: Mangled Facts,” Herald , March 20, 2014.

[52] Quoted in Maqbool Ahmed, “How death stalks policemen in Quetta,” Herald , April 25, 2018.

[53] Author interview, police officer in Quetta, January 2021. For Rafique Mengal’s LeJ connection, see Arif Rafiq, “How Pakistan Protects Itself from Regional Sectarian War,” National Interest , September 15, 2015. See also Mohammad Taqi, “Murder and Mayhem in Balochistan,” Daily Times , June 10, 2015.

[54] Author interviews, police officers in Karachi and Quetta, November 2020.

[55] See Shaikh Rahimullah Haqqani declaring ISIS/ISK followers as khawarij , meaning rejectionists, who left the fold of Islam, in “Who are Khawarij here: Full Details,” YouTube video, February 4, 2020. See also “IS ‘prime suspect’ for Peshawar seminary bombing,” Dawn , October 30, 2020.

[56] For details, see Riaz Khan, “Bomb at seminary in Pakistan kills 8 students, wounds 136,” Associated Press, October 27, 2020.

[57] See Tahir Khan, “Senior Afghan Taliban commander shot dead near Peshawar,” Daily Times , January 25, 2021.

[58] Abdul Basit, “Threat of Urban Jihadism in South Asia,” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses 10:3 (2018): pp. 3-4. See also Huma Yusuf, “University Radicalization: Pakistan’s Next Counterterrorism Challenge,” CTC Sentinel 9:2 (2016).

[59] On a new generation of salafi-thinking radicals in Pakistan, see Jasmin Lorch, “Trajectories of Political Salafism: Insights from the Ahle Hadith Movement in Pakistan and Bangladesh,” Middle East Institute, October 30, 2018.

[60] Author interview, police officers in Karachi and Lahore, December 2019.

[61] For instance, see Zia Ur Rahman, “Recent attacks show resurgence of Sindhi separatists and TTP in Karachi: CRSS report,” The News , October 8, 2020.

[62] See Imtiaz Ali, “Police see new underground group behind recent targeted killings in Karachi,” Dawn , January 31, 2019.

[63] See Animesh Roul, “Pakistan Confronts Resurgent Baluch Ethno-Separatist Militancy,” Terrorism Monitor 18:15 (2020).

[64] See Syed Raza Hassan, “Coordinated blasts kill four in Pakistan, including soldiers,” Reuters, June 19, 2020.

[65] For background, see Owen Bennet-Jones, “Altaf Hussain, the notorious MQM leader who swapped Pakistan for London,” Guardian , July 29, 2013. See also S. Akbar Zaidi, “The rise and fall of Altaf Hussain,” The Hindu , September 8, 2016.

[66] See “Rangers arrest MQM-South Africa activists, recover ‘biggest ever cache of weapons,” The News , December 12, 2018. See also “Shehla Raza, Saeed Ghani receive life threats from MQM-South Africa,” ARY News, May 4, 2019.

[67] Author interviews, police officers in Lahore and Karachi, November 2020.

[68] Author interview, police officer in Karachi, November 2020. See also “Pakistanis pose a threat to Gulf communities, says Dubai security chief,” Dawn , January 2, 2020. UAE is also used as a transit point for human trafficking from Pakistan. For details, see “Recent trends of human trafficking and migrant smuggling to and from Pakistan,” United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, July 2013. For sex trafficking in and through UAE, see “Trafficking in Persons Report 2019,” U.S. Department of State, June 2019.

[69] Aamir Latif, “Pakistan: ‘Mastermind’ of Chinese consulate attack held,” AA Agency News, July 3, 2019.

[70] For a profile of Masood Azhar, see Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, “The Terrorist Who Got Away,” New York Times , March 19, 2020.

[71] See Rezaul H Laskar and Aadil Mir, “Al-Qaeda’s India affiliate hints at shifting focus to Kashmir,” Hindustan Times , March 22, 2020.

[72] Shahid Hamid, “PM Imran warns against crossing LoC for Kashmir Jihad,” Express Tribune , September 19, 2019.

[73] “Pakistan: Surge in Targeted Killings of Ahmedis,” Human Rights Watch, November 26, 2020.

[74] For background, see Mohammad Taqi, “What Does the Death of Barelvi Firebrand Khadim Rizvi Mean for Sectarian Politics,” WIRE, November 28, 2020.

[75] For details, see Shah Meer Baloch and Hannah Ellis-Petersen, “Pakistani Shias live in terror as sectarian violence increases,” Guardian , October 21, 2020.

[76] Jaffer A. Mirza, “The Changing Landscape of Anti-Shia Politics in Pakistan,” Diplomat, September 28, 2020.

[77] For background and details, see Hassan Abbas, Shiism and Sectarian Conflict in Pakistan: Identity Politics, Iranian Influence and Tit-for-Tat Violence, Occasional Paper Series (West Point, NY: Combating Terrorism Center, 2010).

[78] “Sectarian Tensions,” Dawn Editorial , September 21, 2020.

[79] See Asad Hashim and Saadullah Akhter, “Pakistani Hazara families refuse to bury dead after attack,” Al Jazeera, January 4, 2021.

[80] Muhammad Amir Rana, “Security projections for 2021,” Dawn , January 24, 2021.

[81] For details, see Rashad Bukhari and Qamar-ul Huda, “A Critique of Countering Violent Extremism Programs in Pakistan,” Center for Global Policy, July 2020.

[82] For details, see Ayaz Gul, “Islamic State Announces ‘Pakistan Province,’” Voice of America, May 15, 2019.

[83] For comparable examples, see Hassan Abbas and Nadia Gerspacher, “The Irregulars,” Foreign Policy , March 30, 2015.

[84] See Tariq Parvez, “TTP militancy was by one sunni sub sect ie deobandies and was anti state as …,” Twitter, September 19, 2020. Parvez reiterated what he stated in his tweet in a phone communication with the author in December 2020.

[85] For details, see Hassan Abbas ed., Stabilizing Pakistan Through Police Reforms (New York: Asia Society, 2012). See also Robert Perito and Tariq Pervez, “A Counterterrorism Role for Pakistan’s Police Stations,” USIP Special Report 351 , August 2014.

[86] See Ansar Abbasi, “Police reforms – the govt’s forgotten agenda,” The News , July 17, 2019.

[87] Afzal Shigri, “Politics of Police Reform,” Dawn , December 19, 2020.

[88] Baqir Sajjad Syed, “PM okays creation of liaison body for spy agencies,” Dawn , November 24, 2020.

[89] Author interview, Tariq Khosa, former Inspector General of Police in Baluchistan, Dubai, UAE, December 2019.

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> Journals
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> Volume 15 Issue 1
> Terrorism in Pakistan: the psychosocial context and...

Article contents

Historical developments, psychological influence, the contribution of the religious schools, the link between terrorism and mental disorder, terrorism in pakistan: the psychosocial context and why it matters.

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2018

Most nations are unable to reach a consensus on a legally binding definition of ‘terrorism.’ The term seems emotionally charged and, as such, governments have been devising their own definitions. So far the United Nations has been unable to devise an internationally agreed-upon definition of terrorism. Terrorism is suggested to be ‘the use of intimidation or fear for advancement of political objectives’ (Kruglanski & Fishman, Reference Kruglanski and Fishman 2006 ). Since the ‘9/11’ incident, Muslim countries in particular feel emotionally threatened with the word terrorism and perceive it as synonymous with the acts of terror carried out by so-called Muslim extremist groups. This is further complemented in the media by the unjust linking of such horrendous terror attacks to Islamic Jihad.

Terrorism has brought an enormous burden on South Asian countries through the adverse impacts on their social, economic, political and physical infrastructure. Pakistan has suffered particularly excessively from the social, economic and human costs due to terrorism (Daraz et al , Reference Daraz, Naz and Khan 2012 ). Surprisingly, Pakistan is portrayed as being on the front line in the international war against terrorism and at the same time has been wrongly labelled as a sponsor of international terrorism. Terrorism in Pakistan is a multidimensional phenomenon and, among many precipitating factors, the psychosocial factors play an important role. This paper attempts to address what we believe are significant psychosocial determinants to terrorism in Pakistan.

The act of carrying out terrorist activity does not come from a single moment of inspiration but rather from a complex process of cognitive accommodation and assimilation over accumulating steps. It is wrongly reductionist to label the terrorists as mad or psychopaths (Atran, Reference Atran 2003 ; Horgan, Reference Horgan 2008 ). Terrorists’ motivation may involve a deep, underlying quest for personal meaning and significance. Several analyses of such motives have appeared in recent years. There are differences in these analyses regarding the type and variety of motivational factors identified as critical to terrorism. Some authors identified a singular motivation as crucial; others listed a ‘cocktail’ of motives (Sageman, Reference Silke and Silke 2004 ; Bloom, Reference Bloom 2005 ).

Self-sacrifice and martyrdom has been explicitly used in almost all religions and is aggressively exploited by terrorist outfits who groom suicide bombers using the ideology of Islamist martyrdom (Atran, Reference Atran 2003 ). Some have argued that suicide bombers may actually be clinically suicidal and attempting to escape personal impasse (Lankford, Reference Lankford 2013 ). In grooming young impressionable adolescents, extremist organisations brainwash these adolescents into believing that the ultimate self-sacrifice by suicide bombing will elevate their stature in the eyes of God and send them straight to heaven. This is associated with massive financial compensations to the deceased family. Terrorist organisations in Pakistan, through this process of brainwashing, have been able to convert young impressionable Muslim adolescents into a ‘suicide bomber in six weeks’ (Nizami et al , Reference Nizami, Rana and Hassan 2014 ). In the current scenario of the existing war on terror, this complex process of recruiting young adolescents as suicide bombers seems irreversible.

Another survey indicated that in Pakistan only a minority of the religious schools promoted an extremist view of Islam (Bano, Reference Bano 2007 ). An interrogation of 79 terrorists involved in anti-Western attacks found that very few had attended a madrassa. This suggests that terrorist groups may selectively recruit better qualified people for technically demanding tasks (Bergen & Pandey, Reference Bergen and Pandey 2006 ). However, the religious seminaries have been implicated as playing the role of recruitment centres for the suicide bombers (Nizami et al , Reference Nizami, Rana and Hassan 2014 ).

However, apart from certain pathological cases, a causal connection between an individual's mental disorder and engagement in terrorist activity could not be established (Daraz et al , Reference Daraz, Naz and Khan 2012 ). However, there can be a connection between an individual engaging in terrorist activity and developing a mental disorder as mental disorders worsen in stress, anxiety and depression.

The adverse impacts of terrorism lead the masses towards anomie and create the tendency towards suicide and mental illnesses (Daraz et al , Reference Daraz, Naz and Khan 2012 ). Poor health, depressive symptoms, risky behaviours in young adults, personality variables, social inequalities, criminality, social networks and international foreign policy have all been proposed to be influential drivers for grievances that lead to radicalisation and terrorism (La Free & Ackerman, Reference La Free and Ackerman 2009 ).

It may well be that individuals with mild depression would be a better target for gradual psychological moulding. Female suicide bombers who are predominantly motivated by revenge as opposed to their male counterparts may have some degree of clinical depression (Jacques & Taylor, Reference Jacques and Taylor 2008 ). Personality traits are useless as predictors for understanding why people become terrorists. However, personality traits and environmental conditions are the contributing factors for terrorism (Horgan, Reference Horgan 2008 ). There are protective and modifiable risk factors early on the path towards radicalisation. The benefits of early intervention have far reaching implications for preventing significant depressive symptoms, promoting wellbeing and perhaps social capital (Bhui et al , Reference Bhui, Everitt and Jones 2014 ).

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Volume 15, Issue 1
Asad Tamizuddin Nizami (a1) , Tariq Mahmood Hassan (a2) , Sadia Yasir (a3) , Mowaddat Hussain Rana (a4) and Fareed Aslam Minhas (a5)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1192/bji.2017.9

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Building a sense of nationhood will be key

There has been a spike in violent terrorist activities in Pakistan ever since the 9/11 attacks in 2001. If we look for the root causes of these extremist activities we can trace them back to the Soviet-Afghan war. Now for terrorism in Pakistan we look back at the history of the Taliban. In 1989 when the USSR invaded Afghanistan Pakistan joined the proxy US-Soviet war and backed the Afghan mujahideen. From 43 Muslim countries 100,000-500,000 mujahideen were mobilized to Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight the USSR. The CIA masterminded the Afghan jihad to avenge the US defeat in Vietnam with logistics support from the ISI. The joint move of these two intelligence agencies with the help of financial support from Saudi Arabia led to the defeat of the Soviet forces in 1989.

After the proxy war the USA’s unwise decision to leave Afghanistan without proper re-socialization of Afghani jihadi groups led to an outbreak of civil war between warlords and jihadi groups for a share of resources and power and paved the way for the Taliban movement in Afghanistan in early 1990. Then under the leadership of Mullah Omar, first they captured Kandahar in 1994, and then in 1996, and imposed Islamic Sharia in Afghanistan.

After 9/11, the Pakistani decision to abandon the Taliban under US pressure and to become a “frontline” state in the War on Terror brought a massive change in its strategic security paradigm. Thus the heroes of the USA and Arab nations who sponsored the Afghan jihad against the USSR were suddenly declared villains, enemies, and terrorists. Talibanization largely emerged after the US invasion of Afghanistan to hunt down Osama Bin Laden, the Al Qaeda chief, and renmove its allied Taliban government who were declared responsible for the 9/11 attacks in the USA.

Thus this led to an uncertain situation that paved way for the creation of a more powerful, organized Islamic militancy in Pakistan under the name of Tehrik Taliban Pakistan in December 2007 that waged a bloody war against the state to enforce Islamic Sharia in Pakistan. The senior Taliban leadership nominated a veteran jihadi Baitullah Mehsud of South Waziristan as the first Amir . Initially, 27 militant organizations joined TTP and established its organizational structure in 24 districts of, all seven tribal agencies of FATA, and later extended its terrorist activities deep into Islamabad, as well as Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Baluchistan with the help of Punjabi Taliban and other sectarian affiliates.

Mehsud was killed by a US drone strike. After his death, Hakimullah Mehsud took over in 2009. He aggressively pursued the violent campaign of Baitullah Mehsud until November 2013, when he was also killed by a US drone attack.

Pakistan witnessed a total of 11,521 terrorism-related incidents from 1970 to 2014. Unfortunately, 84 percent (9,658) of the total violence in Pakistan surfaced after joining the U.S. “war on terror” in 2001. Providing two bases Shamsi Airbase in Baluchistan and Jacobabad in Sindh further triggered this violent reaction. More importantly, 80 percent (9,222) of the violence erupted after the formation of TTP in 2007. TTP successfully engaged the target by applying different techniques such as bombings or explosions, armed assaults, kidnapping, assassinations, hostage-taking, hijacking, infrastructure attacks, etc. Pakistani Taliban abducted five US soldiers from Afghanistan in July 2003, two Chinese engineers in 2005, 250 Pakistani soldiers in South Waziristan, in 2011, Haider Gilani, son of former PM Yousef Raza Gilani, in 2013 and many other important political and government officials for political leverage in negotiations and sometimes for handy ransom for TTP operations.

Assassination of high-profile politicians include former PM Benazir Bhutto, just after the emergence of TTP in 2007 revealed TTP’s interest in the future power politics of Pakistan. According to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies digital database on conflict and security, 88 percent of the total acts of terrorism in Pakistan were committed by TTP. Since 2001, terrorism-related incidents have cost 59,694 lives and cost more than $106.98 billion in losses to the economy. Pakistan has witnessed 407 suicide attacks (99.03 percent) of overall suicide attacks (411) since 1970. During the 30-year period (1970- 2000), only four suicide attacks had been reported in Pakistan. However, after joining the War on Terror in 2001, this number has risen to 411. The country witnessed its first suicide attack in 2002. Up to 2006, the number increased to 25. However, after the formation of TTP in 2007, the number reached 411, 93.91 percent by the TTP. TTP’s main target was Pakistani citizens (96.5 percent). Only 3.5 percent of all attacks were on foreigners. Civilian and private business remained is main target. Militants carried out 3,307 (32 percent) attacks against civilian and private businesses throughout the country. The second potential target was social services, including educational institutions, health sector, and non-military government installations, with 2,783 (29 percent) attacks against them. A total of 2,406 (25 percent) of the attacks were carried out against the military indicates that 86 percent of the attacks have been carried out against civilian/private business, social services and law enforcement agencies including the military and the police, Frontier Corps and Intelligence agencies. Religious organizations, political parties, media, and journalists were also attacked during the period from 2001 to 2014. All this violence was happening against Pakistanis and the perpetrators not only had the sympathy from a large section of Pakistani society but this sympathy was also found in the highest ranks of military, Lt Gen Mahmud Ahmed, DG ISI at that time, turned out to be a strong supporter of Taliban.

When we apply concepts of peace to this case study things get clearer. Peacekeeping in this case was done by the military of Pakistan by use of force to have an fragile order of peace; once that was achieved now the military and state are working on peace building, focusing on root causes of militancy; building educational institutions, creating job opportunities, giving skill education to locals and former militants, and mainstreaming these areas by integrating them in the province of KPK

Conflict Analysis and terrorism in Pakistan

The terrorism in Pakistan was because it was the battlefield of clash between western liberal capitalist ideology and fundamentalist Islamic or one would say extremist Islamic ideology. Post 9/11 America wanted Pakistan to be its ally in the War on Terror and ban the militant outfits it once used against the USSR. On the other hand these armed groups and a big section of Pakistani society retaliated against the ruling regime in Pakistan and what they called westernization of Pakistani society. Responding to this retaliation, the state started military operations in its North-Western tribal areas where these armed groups had significant presence.

We can apply the concept of Human needs theory to the post-military operation situation in tribal areas as it was not easy for the military to eradicate militants from these areas, because military strikes and US drone attacks were proving counterproductive as civilians were being also killed in collateral damage and human rights situation was worsening. As people there were not getting fundamental human rights such as the right to live peacefully and their basic needs, such as health, education were not being fulfilled, more people were joining these militants, thus the conflict was becoming more complex.

Surface causes of the conflict were Pakistan joining the American bloc in occupying brotherly Islamic state, Afghanistan.
Root causes were unemployment, illiteracy, less development in these tribal areas. Secondly these Pashtun tribes have a rich history of resisting military forces trying to rule them by force, and which they deem a threat to their culture and values. Another root cause was the anti- Pakistan sentiment in a section of the Afghan community which started from the Durand Line dispute and which was very much prevalent in Zahir Shah’s rule in Afghanistan in early 1950s.
Triggering causes were the collateral damage due to the military operation by Pakistani forces and US drones strikes.

Main actors or primary stake holders in the conflict in Pakistan were obviously the state of Pakistan and militant organizations including the TTP, the people of tribal areas and subsequently the whole of Pakistan were also key stakeholders. Secondary stakeholders were the USA and its allies, as well as the people of Afghanistan and Afghan Taliban.

The spoilers in the conflict were India and the anti-Pakistan groups it backed in Afghanistan. India quite impressively made anti-Pakistan sentiments flare up in Afghanistan and used them against Pakistan for its interests. The main interest of India in Afghanistan was to engage Pakistan in a two-front confrontation (Western and Eastern borders), so that Pakistan’s military gets over-occupied and fails to maintain pressure in Kashmir. Another interest of India was to gain regional dominance by having pro India government in Afghanistan. The extent of India’s success in its plan was eminent by the statements of key ministers in Ashraf Ghani’s administration.

When we apply concepts of peace to this case study things get clearer. Peacekeeping in this case was done by the military of Pakistan by use of force to have an fragile order of peace; once that was achieved now the military and state are working on peace building, focusing on root causes of militancy; building educational institutions, creating job opportunities, giving skill education to locals and former militants, and mainstreaming these areas by integrating them in the province of KPK.

In this regard all provinces of the country have decided to cut a share from their NFC awards to allocate extra money for these areas left behind. Now the next step in this process is Nation building for which integrating the people of these areas with rest of Pakistan, building a sense of nation and homogeneity is the key.

Treating ‘maritime numbness’ – tapping the blue potential of pakistan, a new political era for sri lanka, epaper_24-09-27 lhr, epaper_24-09-27 khi, epaper_24-09-27 isb, pakistan, uk agree to promote bilateral ties in various sectors.

Terrorism in Pakistan has declined, but the underlying roots of extremism remain

Subscribe to the center for middle east policy newsletter, madiha afzal madiha afzal fellow - foreign policy , center for middle east policy , strobe talbott center for security, strategy, and technology , center for asia policy studies.

January 15, 2021

This piece is part of a series titled “ Nonstate armed actors and illicit economies: What the Biden administration needs to know ,” from Brookings’s Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors .

According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, Pakistan saw 319 terrorism-related incidents in 2020, and 169 associated deaths of civilians. That represents a decline, from a high of nearly 4,000 such incidents in 2013, with over 2,700 civilian deaths (see figure below).

This fall is largely due to the Pakistani army’s kinetic operations against the Pakistani Taliban — also known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — which had been responsible for the majority of deaths of civilians and security forces since 2007, the year it formed officially as an umbrella organization of various militant groups. Over the years, American drone strikes targeted and killed successive TTP leaders, including Baitullah Mehsud in 2009, Hakimullah Mehsud in 2013, and Mullah Fazlullah in 2018. The Pakistani military’s Zarb-e-Azb operation (named for the sword of the Prophet Muhammad) began in 2014 — after a TTP attack on the Karachi airport that June — and increased in intensity after the Peshawar Army Public School attack of December that year, which killed more than 130 schoolchildren. Since 2017, having largely routed the TTP (because of limited information access to the area, there are questions about how many terrorists were killed, versus simply displaced across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border), the military’s operation entered a new phase of “elimination” of militant groups. The operation is called Radd-ul-Fasaad, which literally means elimination of all strife.

Figure: Terrorism-related fatalities in Pakistan

While this top-line picture in terms of number of attacks and casualties is clearly a positive one, the TTP has been regrouping since last summer. Various breakaway factions pledged allegiance to the group last July, and there are reports of it making a comeback in at least six districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa “ with the intimidation of locals, targeted killings, and attacks on security forces .” The TTP is reported to have killed at least 40 security forces between March and September 2020. Official Pakistani sources blamed India as “behind” the revival. On the other end, the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement, an ethnic protest movement that claims human rights violations against civilians by the Pakistani military during its operations against the Taliban, has alleged (without systematic proof) that “the Taliban are being allowed to return” to the tribal areas in a “secret deal with the military.”

The TTP, of course, maintains ties with the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida. Some have speculated that the TTP comeback may be linked with the Afghan peace process and Pakistan’s fencing of the border with Afghanistan, both of which threaten the group’s sanctuary in Afghanistan. (A U.N. report from July 2020 stated there were 6,000 Pakistani fighters in Afghanistan, most affiliated with the TTP.) There has also been some speculation that the Afghan peace process might include, at some point, a separate Afghan-Pakistan deal, with Afghanistan denying safe haven to the TTP potentially in return for Pakistan denying sanctuary to the Haqqanis (though it is unclear whether that will be possible, or acceptable to Pakistan). Pakistan has already raised questions about Afghanistan’s sanctuary for the TTP.

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The Islamic State in Khorasan (ISIS-K), which operates in Afghanistan and is the Afghan Taliban’s rival, has been responsible for recent attacks in Baluchistan, including of 11 Shia Hazara coal miners this January — complicating Pakistan’s already violent sectarian landscape. In discussing this attack, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan again blamed India for “backing ISIS” to “spread unrest” in Pakistan. (Pakistan has also long claimed that India uses Afghan soil — on which ISIS-K is based — to destabilize Pakistan.)

Anti-India militant groups continue to have a foothold in Pakistan, but Pakistan has begun taking action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in recent years, especially in the wake of its enhanced monitoring by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in 2018 for terrorism financing; it is a key goal of Khan’s government to have Pakistan removed from this “grey list,” because it hurts the country’s image and causes it financial harm. Most notably, Pakistan has sentenced Hafiz Saeed, the leader of the LeT, to 11 years in prison for terrorism financing. Another LeT leader, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, was also recently sentenced to five years for terrorism financing. The United States has acknowledged these steps, but has argued that Pakistan needs to hold these LeT leaders accountable for more than terrorism financing. Pakistan has taken less action against Jaish-e-Mohammad, the terrorist group responsible for the Pulwama attack of February 2019; its leader, Masood Azhar, is at large. Notably, Pakistan-based militant groups have not been responsible for any violence in Kashmir since the Pulwama attack; in an interview later in 2019, Khan asked Pakistanis not to engage in any violence or “jihad” in India, because it would be blamed on Pakistan and would harm it. That signal seems to have worked.

Placing the blame on India for terrorism in Pakistan is something the country has long done, although not always in as direct a manner as in 2020. Beyond linking the recent ISIS-K attack with India, Pakistan also linked the Baluch Liberation Army’s June 2020 attack on the Karachi Stock Exchange with its eastern neighbor (Pakistan has longed argued India supports the Baluch insurgency). In November, the Pakistani foreign minister, in a splashy press conference, released details of the “ dossier ” Pakistan has compiled linking India to funding, arming, and training terrorists (including the TTP) against Pakistan. Only the summary — not the full dossier — discussed in that meeting has been made public. It found a receptive audience in a Pakistani population already wary of the Narendra Modi government for its actions in Kashmir and the alarming rise in intolerance toward Muslims in India. The Pakistani government says it has shared the dossier with the U.N. and various governments, but those parties have not publicly acknowledged it.

Pakistan’s strategy toward militant groups has long been two-pronged, as it were: to take overt (and successful) action against groups targeting the Pakistani state and citizenry — the TTP — without taking action against the groups it has considered “strategic assets,” including the Afghan Taliban that have sought sanctuary on its soil and anti-India militants that its intelligence agencies have covertly supported. Underlying this approach has been an effort to hedge bets: regarding the Taliban’s possible influence in Afghanistan after an international withdrawal, and regarding militant proxies who may give Pakistan parity on an otherwise lopsided conventional military footing with India. There are signs some of this is changing. For instance, Pakistan has developed a good relationship with Kabul, especially in recent months, but it also knows its leverage over the Taliban keeps it relevant to the Afghan peace process. The FATF listing has induced Pakistan to take its strictest action to date on militant groups, especially LeT. It also helps that Pakistan is keen to shed an image associated with terrorism. Yet the long-term sustainability of actions Pakistan has taken in response to pressure from FATF remains to be seen; will they be reversed when the FATF grey-listing is lifted? And what happens after the international withdrawal from Afghanistan is complete?

The central issue is not one of state capacity, but an unwillingness of the Pakistani state to paint all jihadist groups with the same brush, to recognize the linkages in ideology that connect them all — and to acknowledge how those ideologies find fodder in Pakistan’s laws, educational curricula, politics, and indeed the very nature of how Pakistan has defined itself, as I detailed in my book . This issue holds for Pakistan’s military, and also across its spectrum of major political parties, as has been demonstrated over the last 12 years with all three of them successively holding power. That lack of recognition of how terrorism and extremism are connected, and of the very roots of extremism, is the crux of the problem: Militant groups can always find recruits, from other groups or from the general population. Non-armed right-wing fundamentalist groups, notably the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), share these ideologies, glorify violence (the TLP, after all, celebrated the murder of Salmaan Taseer for daring to propose reform in Pakistan’s blasphemy laws), and enjoy growing support and sympathy.

For a brief time after the Peshawar school attack of 2014, there was some clarity in recognizing the homegrown nature of the Pakistan Taliban, and the country devised a National Action Plan to tackle extremism and terrorism. While it was incomplete and never acknowledged the deeper roots of extremism, it was a start. But it has gone by the wayside as the Pakistani state has turned back once again to blaming India for terrorism in the country. Meanwhile, the underlying roots of extremism — the country’s curricula, the way its politics works, and its laws, which have all primed its citizenry to buy into and sympathize with the propaganda of extremist groups — remain intact. Pakistan’s claims about India deserve to be heard and investigated, as the international community ignoring them only worsens Pakistan’s sense of victimhood, but that does not absolve the state of its own policies that have fostered extremism and allowed terror groups to proliferate on its soil.

As the Biden administration takes office, it is worth recognizing the effectiveness of the FATF tool, and the limited leverage of the United States to effect real change on security matters in Pakistan, at least initially. Ultimately, Pakistan must be the one to connect the dots linking all the terrorist groups on its soil and their ideologies, acknowledge how it has contributed to extremism within its borders, and decide on addressing the roots of that extremism. I would argue that the best way to encourage it to do so is for America to develop a relationship with the country that is separate from Afghanistan, and separate from India: to deal with Pakistan on its own terms. Meanwhile, security concerns in Pakistan are more or less contained, with the FATF listing and the Pakistani state’s action against the TTP being the primary mechanisms for that control, and the Biden administration need not make them the center of its Pakistan policy.

E-Paper | September 27, 2024

Waves of terrorism.

HISTORICALLY, terrorism has evolved in its aims, forms, frequency, lethality, targets, and operation methods at various intervals. The changes underscore the shifting dynamics of terrorism, driven by global political shifts and technological advancements. In each era, terrorist strategies have been shaped by the technology of the time. While terrorism’s underlying causes have varied across different periods, the common thread has been a group of individuals rejecting the prevailing system and resorting to violence to draw attention and achieve their goals.

The evolution of terrorism can be categorised into four waves — the ‘anarchist’ (1880-1920s), ‘anti-colonial’ (1920-1960), ‘new left’ (1960s to end-century) and ‘religiously inspired’ (1979 onwards). A ‘wave of terrorism’ represents a cycle of increased and decreased activity in a specific time frame, characterised by phases of expansion and contraction.

During the anarchist wave, anarchist and nationalist groups employed similar tactics and even shared training, highlighting the interconnectivity and influence among different terrorist ideologies. Diaspora communities became significant contributors to militant groups. This wave highlighted the counterproductive nature of political assassinations, leading to a notable reduction in such actions during the second wave. Diasporas would go on to demonstrate capabilities previously unseen in the second wave. Irish rebels in the 19th century benefited from financial support, arms, and volunteers provided by the Irish-American community.

The kidnapping and murder of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades in 1979 marked a significant moment in the third wave, underlining the continued importance of kidnapping as a tactic. Between 1968 and 1982, the world witnessed 49 international kidnapping incidents involving 951 hostages, forcing companies to insure their executives against kidnappings. This wave also saw renewed efforts in political assassinations. The IRA and its offshoots were responsible for killing two British ambassadors in 1976 and 1979, Lord Mountbatten in 1979, and of unsuccessful attempts on the lives of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Additionally, the Black September group assassinated Jordan’s prime minister in 1971. It was during this wave that the term ‘international terrorism’ became widespread, as militant groups engaged in coordinated attacks, kidnappings, and hijackings. In Latin America and the Middle East, the US emerged as a primary target, with a third of all international terrorist acts aimed at American interests.

Terrorism’s global nature calls for enhanced collaboration.

Despite the eventual defeat of revolutionary terrorists by the end of the third wave, international counterterrorism cooperation faced challenges, evidenced by instances like France’s refusal to extradite suspects from the PLO, Red Brigade, and ETA to West Germany, Italy, and Spain, respectively. However, efforts to enhance global collaboration against terrorism led to the signing of international, including UN, conventions from 1970 to 1999, aimed at prohibiting hijacking and hostage-taking.

The fourth wave has been characterised by a misinterpretation of religion as a dominant factor, with militant groups leveraging the internet for recruitment, radicalisation, and fundraising. They have also mastered the use of social media platforms to disseminate sophisticated propaganda. This wave stands apart from its predecessors, driven not by political ambitions but by a distorted interpretation of religious doctrines. Advocates of religiously motivated terrorism contend that the eradication of perceived evil justifies the use of militancy. Events such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution played a role in propelling religious fundamentalism into prominence, whereas groups like the Tamil Tigers attempted to maintain a secular image.

In 1901, president Roosevelt rallied for a crusade to eliminate terrorism globally, and a century later, in September 2001, president George W. Bush proclaimed a “war that would continue until every terrorist group with global reach had been identified, halted, and defeated”. This repetition of resolve over a century later underscores the necessity for major powers to understand why history has repeated itself and why they failed to create history. The critical question now is whether the current wave, driven primarily by religious motivation, will persist or conclude by 2025. The global nature of terrorism calls for enhanced international collaboration, including the establishment of MOUs, mutual legal assistance, and extradition treaties, as crucial measures for combating terrorism and minimising the influence of violent non-state entities.

The writer is the author of Pakistan: In Between Extremism and Peace.

X: @alibabakhel

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2024

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Pakistan and Terrorism: A Summary
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Pakistan and Terrorism: A Summary
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Essay On Terrorism In Pakistan
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Terrorism in Pakistan (Causes and Solutions)

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Terrorism in Pakistan: the psychosocial context and why it matters
A survey of just over 50 000 households in Pakistan found that children in Urdu-medium government schools and madrassas were from poorer households than those in English-medium private schools. ... Essay On Terrorism In Pakistan: Its Causes, Impacts And Remedies. Civil Service Pakistan Forum 28 September 2011.
PDF Reasons to Remedies: Framing of Terrorist Attacks in Major Urdu and
Twenty first century has witnessed a new kind of war, "War on Terror". Pakistan joined this war after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and became a front line state in this war. Resultantly, Pakistan had to end its support for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban did not accept that policy shift and in reaction began attacking ...
PDF Pakistan Journal of Terrorism Research
Despite constraints, Pakistan has fought extremism and terrorism with perseverance. Armed Forces, Law Enforcement Agencies and Counter-Terrorism Departments (CTDs) have responded to the challenge of terrorism with unparalleled sacrifices and professional commitment. Pakistan Journal of Terrorism Research (PJTR) is the first journal in the
PDF War on Terrorism and its Impacts on Pakistan's Security
Terrorism, which was deeply rooted in Pakistan and badly affected the security and confidence of the masses. People cannot live their lives peacefully. The issue of terrorism seriously began in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks on World Trade Center (WTC) New York (Afzal, Iqbal, & Inayay, 2012).
PDF Terrorism in Pakistan: Pre & Post COVID -19 Analysis
Terrorism in Pakistan: Pre & Post COVID -19 Analysis Ijaz Khalid, Manzoor Ahmed and Muhammad Bilal Abstract Terrorism dominated global politics since September 11, 2001 till the emergence of global pandemic of COVID-19 that molded every state policy priority. The paper evaluates terrorism in Pakistan that hits the most after Afghanistan.
Causes and Incentives for Terrorism in Pakistan
This study offers fresh empirical insights into the causes of terrorism in Pakistan. The authors present a novel strategy for hypothesis building in conflict studies, and explore the importance of the explanatory variables within the time frame of the analysis. ... 18 The main torch bearer of this Urdu supremacy was the Urdu-speaking Muhajir ...
PDF Extremism in Pakistan: Issues and Challenges
Pakistan is at the forefront of war against terrorism and its society is experiencing its devastating results in the shape of daily terrorist attacks, unrest, violence and bloodshed. Hence, this extremism leading to terrorism is the biggest threat to Pakistan's socio-economic and political development (Sabir, 2007).
PDF National Narrative to Counter Terrorism in Pakistan: A Critique
National Narrative of Counter Terrorism in Pakistan [PAKISTAN JOURNAL OF TERRORISM RESEARCH, VOL I, ISSUE II] 2 make the response of the state vis-à-vis militancy more robust, comprehensive and effective. The findings of this research study have been drawn through a blend of quantitative and qualitative research methods. At the outset, the ...
Extremism and Terrorism Trends in Pakistan: Changing Dynamics and New
This article looks specifically at terrorism and extremism trends in Pakistan with a focus on relatively new developments that are deemed worthy of deeper analysis and attention. This article examines five dimensions of the terrorism threat faced by Pakistan. It first look at TTP's efforts to stage a comeback in Pakistan.
Terrorism in Pakistan: the psychosocial context and why it matters
A survey of just over 50 000 households in Pakistan found that children in Urdu-medium government schools and madrassas were from poorer households than those in English-medium private schools. ... Wadhwani, R. (2011) Essay On Terrorism In Pakistan: Its Causes, Impacts And Remedies. Civil Service Pakistan Forum. 28 September 2011. Available at: ...
Terrorism in Pakistan: A conflict analysis
Unfortunately, 84 percent (9,658) of the total violence in Pakistan surfaced after joining the U.S. "war on terror" in 2001. Providing two bases Shamsi Airbase in Baluchistan and Jacobabad in ...
The Terror Speaks: Inside Pakistan's Terrorism Discourse and National
There is a regulation, however, called Frontier Crimes Regulation, which was imposed on FATA by the British Rulers of India in 1901 that is still in force, albeit with some amendments. See: National Assembly of Pakistan, The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (6th ed.) (Islamabad: National Assembly of Pakistan, 2012), pp. 143-147.
PDF The Rise of Extremism in Pakistan: International Dynamics
The three major religious parties—Jamaat-e-Islami, Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam, and Jamiat-e- Ulema-e-Pakistan, together polled 21 percent of popular votes in the 1970 general elections. In the July 2018 elections, the popular vote percentage of the coalition of five religious parties was shrunk to 5 percent.
PDF The Terrorist Threat and the Policy Response in Pakistan
The political struggle that started in 1940 under the banner of the All India Muslim League resulted in the creation of Pakistan in 1947. While created in the name of Islam, or more precisely as a state for the Muslims of India, Mohammad Ali Jinnah—the founding father of Pakistan—wanted it to be a modern secular state.
PDF From Traditional Security [to Human Security PAKISTAN JOURNAL OF
Throughout the history, Pakistan's security policy remained overwhelmingly skewed towards countering traditional security threats emanating from external borders. However, the last two decades proved vulnerability of Pakistan in domain of internal security threats and most eminent of those is terrorism.
The role of peace education in countering violent extremism in Pakistan
61. The fact that Malala benefitted from the materials and capacity building offered by the SYF project is validated by a newspaper report on Malala (The Express Tribune, 15 December 2011) that states: 'She (Malala) used the lessons she had learned in the program to write a series of articles for the BBC News Urdu website during her family's displacement from the Swat valley in the summer ...
Sectarian terrorism in Pakistan: Causes, impact and remedies
Fig. 1 presents the sectarian (or religious) terrorist incidents in Pakistan for the period 1972-2017. As shown, religious terrorism started increasing after the end of the Cold War during (Ganguly & Howenstein, 2009) the late 1980s.Later, religious terrorism amplified by the end of Afghan Jihad during the 1990s while increased phenomenally during the WOT.
Terrorism in Pakistan has declined, but the underlying roots of
According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, Pakistan saw 319 terrorism-related incidents in 2020, and 169 associated deaths of civilians. That represents a decline, from a high of nearly 4,000 ...
Nazria pakistan essay in urdu pdf
News urdu essay on terrorism in pakistan dehshat gardi column by sec line temizlik. Today s pakistan is posted here you may not agree with dr tahir at all what he wrote but it will increase your knowledge i hope you will like it. Do qaumi nazriya by ahmad saeed. Do qaumi nazria mujadid e alif sani and iqbal ki nazar main.
PDF Pakistan Journal of Terrorism Research, Vol II, Issue I
From Counter-Terrorism to Counter Violent Extremism:[PAKISTAN JOURNAL OF TERRORISM RESEARCH, VOL II, ISSUE I] 6 Furthermore, the policy was distinctive in its approach towards the concept of security, as it linked the traditionally conceived idea of security to human security [i.e., the security of people of Pakistan].14 Within the conceptual debate of human security, NISP (2014) conceived the ...
Rising terrorism
From Kashmir Singh (apprehended in 1973) to Surjeet Singh (1982) and Sarabjit Singh (1990), India used a series of intelligence agents to organise and bankroll terrorism in Pakistan. India has ...
PDF Pakistan Journal of Terrorism Research, Vol II, Issue II
State University of New York at Stony Brook. 22 Syed, S.H., Saeed, L., & Martin, R.P., (2015). Causes and Incentives for Terrorism in Pakistan. Journal of Applied Security Research, 10,181-206. Lack of economic activities has also been pointed out as an important source of terrorism in any geographical location.
Waves of terrorism
The evolution of terrorism can be categorised into four waves — the 'anarchist' (1880-1920s), 'anti-colonial' (1920-1960), 'new left' (1960s to end-century) and 'religiously ...