Pakistan Taliban behind school attack are under pressure

For one of the world's more parochial Islamist militant groups, the Pakistan Taliban, or Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has a habit of grabbing global headlines.

The TTP was set up in 2007 to unite a motley collection of local extremist outfits in the rough and restive border regions along Pakistan's frontier with Afghanistan. Much of its time and energy since has been taken up with bitter internal competition and maintaining its ruthless rule over the enclaves it has carved out.

It has also battled Pakistani security forces and launched a series of increasingly audacious and lethal terrorist attacks beyond the frontier zones. Only once has the TTP been linked to a global strike: a plan to bomb Times Square.

This latest operation is a strike on all of these local fronts, with the added effect of assuring attention across the planet, though it is unlikely the latter was a priority.

The TTP has been under pressure in recent months. A series of internal splits has seen major factions peel off. The most important, made up of members of the powerful Mehsud tribe, has simply gone it alone. Others have rejected the brutal violence that has long been a hallmark of the movement.

Mohammed Khurasani, the spokesman who claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attack, has been in the job for only a few weeks. The previous incumbent left to join a breakaway group loyal to the Islamic State.

Proving themselves

Security officials and experts say that when groups fragment and leadership is contested, attacks often become more extreme as individual commanders and their followers seek to prove themselves the most effective, and the most audacious.

Extreme violence, even directed at targets such as schools, also serves to reinforce disintegrating authority over communities in the enclaves where the militants are based. So too does the deployment of multiple suicide bombers – six in this case. The tactic, however banal it has become, remains an effective way of inspiring fear.

Since June, a new and very direct pressure has been applied on the TTP. The Pakistani military finally moved into the north Waziristan tribal agency, where dozens of groups threatening local, regional and international targets were based. More than 1,000 fighters from the movement are thought to have been killed, as well as civilians.

The TTP, which has established a presence in most urban centres, reacted by bringing the war into the heart of Pakistan with a strike on the main international airport in Karachi, the southern port city which is the country's commercial capital, and a huge bombing of a flag ceremony, claimed by a splinter group, on the western border with India.

This latest attack is 20 miles short of the eastern border. Are the Taliban set on demonstrating an ability to strike throughout the country? Possibly. Or they may simply be seeking high-profile targets of opportunity. Khurasani, the spokesman, only said that Tuesday’s attack was in revenge for children killed by the army offensive.

Schools have long been in the Taliban’s crosshairs. More than a thousand have been destroyed by Islamist militants from one faction or another in the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in the past five years. The institutions both symbolise government authority and are seen as un-Islamic. This school is at the edge of a military “cantonment” in Peshawar, the capital of the province, and inevitably many students are the children of servicemen.

The attack reinforces the impression of a civilian and military leadership simply unable to ensure the security of Pakistan's 180-million-plus citizens. It will further raise concerns about the security environment across south Asia. This is, of course, at least in part, the aim of the militants.

The backdrop is the continuing power struggle in Pakistan between the army generals and the elected if imperfect civilian government. On Tuesday, prime minister Nawaz Sharif and army chief Raheel Sharif both flew to Peshawar. They did not travel together. Both said they wanted to oversee operations in person.

One of the many continuing concerns in Washington and elsewhere is Pakistan's "selective" attitude to Islamist militants.

Complete destruction

When the offensive in north Waziristan began, Khawaja Asif, the defence minister, vowed it would be carried through “to its logical conclusion. Any group that uses Pakistan’s soil for terrorism will be eliminated,” he said. “The operation will continue until the complete destruction of terrorism.”

The statement angered officials in Afghanistan and India, which have both repeatedly accused Pakistan of harbouring militants responsible for a string of strikes in their countries.

Special trains laid on last month for followers of Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Pakistan-based group behind the 2008 assault on Mumbai, enraged Delhi. The group was also blamed for an attack in Herat, western Afghanistan, earlier this year. The Afghan Taliban leadership and other insurgent groups have long operated from Pakistan.

Pakistani officials rebut such claims and, privately, often blame their neighbours for the ongoing violence within Pakistan’s borders. The head of the TTP, Mullah Fazlullah, may be in northeastern Afghanistan, and some within the Pakistani security establishment remain convinced that Delhi is backing the Pakistan Taliban, for example.

Such toxic levels of mutual suspicion render any attempt at improving relations between the three nations difficult. And few locally believe the US withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan will help.

Caught in the crossfire in the middle of this maelstrom of violence and politics are the children, of course. – (Guardian service)