Over the past year, the TTP has been reduced to a shell of its former self. Founded in December 2007, it was once a formidable umbrella organization uniting scores of Taliban-style groups across Pakistan’s border regions with Afghan jihadis in a war against the Pakistani state. By the spring of 2009, the TTP controlled most of the country’s northwest, holding territory just 60 miles from Islamabad. While two major Pakistani army operations in 2009 managed to repel them from the capital, the TTP proved resilient, thanks in part to the safe havens it had carved out in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal area and in parts of Afghanistan. But last November, the tide against TTP began to turn once again, when a CIA drone attack in North Waziristan killed its second leader, Hakimullah Mehsud. His successor, Fazlullah, failed to assert control of the group — in part because he wasn’t a member of the Mehsud tribe, which spawned the TTP’s first two leaders. In February, ground operations seemed imminent. Instead, the prime minister announced before parliament that the government would begin talks with the TTP. But those deliberations soon reached an impasse and an impatient army decided to begin its military campaign. Terrorist attacks in Pakistan rose, as did divisions within the TTP. Retired Pakistani generals clamored for operations on news talk shows. In private, the army chief pressed the prime minister to approve ground operations. Ultimately, the military got its way, beginning an air campaign in late winter 2013 that expanded in the spring and forced a reluctant civilian government into launching ground operations against the TTP and other groups in North Waziristan in June. These operations achieved a major tactical victory: They severely weakened the TTP terror machine by denying it the space tooperate. Prior to the Peshawar attack, Pakistan was on pace to have its fewest number of terrorism casualties since 2007.Prior to the Peshawar attack, Pakistan was on pace to have its fewest number of terrorism casualties since 2007. In the process, Pakistan broke the back of the TTP. As the military moved deeper into North Waziristan, the TTP’s internal fissures grew. Umar Khalid Khorasani, an Afghanistan-based leader of the TTP’s Mohmand tribal agency chapter, established a splinter group, the Tehrik-i-Taliban–Jamaat-ul Ahrar (TTP-JA). The Pakistani army and air force kept up their campaign, continuing to hit the TTP and TTP-JA hard through the summer and into the fall. And in recent weeks, the United States has conducted rare drone strikes against TTP and TTP-JA targets inside Afghanistan. Like a bloodied, weakened beast, the TTP lashed out viciously on Tuesday. In attacking the school, the TTP chose the softest targets in a military cantonment. Some, though not all, of the children came from military families. And so the TTP — indifferent to the blood of thousands of innocents on its own hands — has anointed itself as the avenger of its own collateral damage suffered at the hands of the Pakistani army. foreignpolicy/2014/12/17/pakistan-peshawar-afghanistan-terrorism-ttp/
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 00:04:52 +0000
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