Tehrik i Taliban Pakistan

Pakistani Taliban storms airbase near Peshawar

September 18, 2015 by Nasheman

At least 21 security officers among 43 dead in firefight after attack by fighters on military barracks and mosque.

Ambulances took about 20 wounded military personnel to hospital after Friday’s attack, officials said [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Fighters belonging to the Pakistani Taliban have stormed an air force station near Peshawar in Pakistan’s northwest, resulting in a firefight with security forces and the deaths of at least 43 people, sources say.

ISPR, the Pakistan military’s media wing, said at least 21 security officers and five civilians working at the Badaber Air Force base died and 14 fighters were killed in Friday morning’s gun battle.

The Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Taliban, claimed responsibility for the raid at the facility, located on the edge of Peshawar, capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

An army captain and two guards were among the dead, according to the military and a local hospital that received the bodies, and at least 10 soldiers were wounded.

It was unclear if any of the attackers got away. Details about how they managed to make their way into a mosque inside the compound walls and kill worshippers during prayers were sketchy.

Ambulances took around 20 wounded military personnel to hospital, Bilal Ahmed, a rescue official, told Reuters news agency.

Al Jazeera’s Nicole Johnston, reporting from Peshawar, said Friday’s assault was the first major attack conducted by the Pakistani Taliban since the Peshawar school massacre in December.

“Having said that, there have been warnings of a major attack to come … At the stage we don’t know if the 16 killed in the attack on the mosque are civilians or military personnel,” she said.

The assault came as the Pakistan army was carrying out a major operation against local and foreign fighters in the North Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

Major-General Asim Saleem Bajwa, an army spokesman, said the attackers entered the base from different directions in a two-pronged assault – apparently one push targeted the mosque – but security forces quickly responded.

The airbase – established in the 1960s – was not functional and it was mostly being used as a residential place for the employees and officers of the air force, reports said.

Soldiers wounded

In statements posted on Twitter, Bajwa said Pakistan’s army chief, General Raheel Sharif, rushed to Peshawar to meet the security forces taking part in the clearing operation.

He said Sharif would visit a military hospital where doctors were treating wounded soldiers.

A military official at the airbase, who asked not to be identified, said the attackers opened fire on security guards as they tried to fight their way into the facility.

“All the terrorists were wearing explosives-laden jackets and were armed with hand-propelled grenades, mortars, AK-47 rifles,” the official told Reuters.

“The Quick Response Force of the Pakistan army immediately responded and killed six terrorists before they could enter.”

Mohamad Khurasani, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack.

In a statement to the media, he said the fighters gave safe exit to women and children after attacking the base.

He said the group targeted 50 security forces, but the claim could not be confirmed by government or military sources.

Shortly after the attack, a suspected US drone strike hit a home in the South Waziristan tribal region, south of Peshawar, killing at least three fighters and wounding five, according to two Pakistani security officials.

The number of attacks in Pakistan has fallen around 70 percent this year, due to a combination of a military offensive against Taliban bases along the Afghan border and government initiatives to tackle violence.

That follows a massacre at a military-run school last December that killed around 150 people, almost all of them children.

The Pakistani Taliban said it gave safe exit to women and children after attacking the airbase outside Peshawar [EPA]

Peshawar army school reopens after massacre

January 12, 2015 by Nasheman

Security is tight as children return to school where the Pakistani Taliban killed 141 people last month.

More than 130 young students were killed in the attack, the deadliest in Pakistan’s history [Reuters]

by Asad Hashim, Al Jazeera

Peshawar, Pakistan: Peshawar’s Army Public School, the site of a massacre that killed 141 people almost a month ago, has reopened amid tight security in the capital of Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

Helicopters flew overhead as dozens of army soldiers patrolled the streets around the APS, tightly screening entry and exit points to the school, early on Monday morning.

Grim-faced soldiers stood guard as hundreds of children and their parents streamed into the school, where a memorial service was held in the presence of the country’s army chief, General Raheel Sharif.

The mood among the students was sombre, but defiant, as they entered the premises. Many of the children were brought to the school in army trucks, which doubled up as school buses on the first day of school in the new year.

Access to the school was tightly controlled, with army soldiers standing guard on several pickets established in the streets around the school, as well at the graveyard immediately adjacent to it.

Deadliest attack

Particular attention was paid to the locality behind the school, from where at least seven gunmen broke into the premises on December 16, in an attack that saw them go room by room, killing 141 people in all, the deadliest attack in Pakistan’s history.

More than 130 of those killed were students, many of them executed in their classrooms and in the school’s main auditorium.

In the wake of the attack, Pakistan lifted a moratorium on executions in what it called “terrorism cases”, and constituted military courts to try said cases.

The army also stepped up ongoing military operations in the country’s tribal areas, where troops have been battling the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its allies since June.

The TTP claimed responsibility for the attack on the school in Peshawar, saying it was carried out in “revenge” for the alleged killing of women and children in the tribal areas by the military.

‘Challenging the TTP’

“I think it is a good thing that the school is reopening,” Tariq Aziz, 30, whose younger brother, Asad, was killed in the attack, told Al Jazeera. “Already time has been wasted, and the students’ studies are suffering.”

“Even if we are not safe, what can we do? We have to send our children to school. For the sake of their education.”

Hasan Syed, 10, survived the attack, and was one of those who went back to the school on Monday.

“I will not be afraid of going back – I will go back to the school,” he told Al Jazeera. “This determination is because my cousin [Asad Aziz] was martyred. If I go to school, it is like I am challenging the terrorists.”

The reopening of the APS and other schools across Pakistan has been delayed several times, as authorities race to verify that adequate security arrangements are in place.

On Monday, thousands of schools reopened across the country, but many remained shut, as the government had not yet issued them certificates of approval for commencement of classes.

In Peshawar, 118 schools reopened on Monday, while a further 1,380 remained shut.

Pakistan school attack: years of inaction on terror led to this atrocity

December 17, 2014 by Nasheman

Protestors gather in the wake of the attack. EPA/T Mughal

by Talat Farooq, The Conversation

The shock waves from a brutal terror attack that claimed the lives of more than 130 children in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar are being felt around the world.

The Taliban assault, which began on Tuesday morning, has claimed the lives of at least 141 people. Across social media people expressed their horror and sympathy. From Pakistan to the UK, relatives of children attending the Army Public School were anxiously awaiting news.

The attack is being seen as one of the worst in nearly a decade of unabated violence in the country that has killed more than 55,000 Pakistanis – most of whom were civilians.

The Pakistani Taliban, or Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, has confirmed that it was responsible for the attack and said the school was hit in response to army operations that have been taking place in the tribal areas.

Background to the attack

Over the past six months hundreds of Taliban fighters have been killed since a full-fledged military operation called Zarb-e-Azbwas launched. This has involved bombing the North Waziristan and Khyber areas in a bid to stamp out insurgencies.

Zarb-e-Azb was launched on June 15 2014 after talks between the Taliban and the government failed and a terrorist attack on Jinnah International Airport in Karachi left 39 dead, including all 10 gunmen.

The operation has been regarded as successful so far. The main hubs of militant activity have been cleared from North Waziristan and Khyber. And last week, the army gave the go-ahead for civilian authorities to start returning more than one million displaced people to North Waziristan.

But while the military side of the operation has met its targets, the political contribution made by successive governments has been less than satisfactory. The Pakistan Muslim League, in power since 2013, has long argued that dialogue with the Taliban is the preferred option. But this has meant failing to take any real ownership of the war that was raging regardless.

Just days after Zarb-e-Azb started, protesters associated with the political party Pakistan Awami Tehrik were killed in a violent clash with the Punjab police in Lahore, setting the stage for major political turmoil.

The situation worsened as Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf party started to accuse the PML government of electoral fraud in the elections of May 2013. Since August 2014, the PTI has continued to carry out protests, sit-ins and shut-downs in major cities. For its part, the government has failed to seriously resolve the issue through meaningful negotiations.

Failure to act

There has been a consistent lack of sufficient political will and seriousness on the part of the government to fully implement Pakistan’s anti-terrorism laws. Not a single convicted terrorist has so far been punished even though Pakistan carries the death penalty for such crimes.

According to experts, a backlog of cases, the absence of a proper mechanism to monitor religious schools, the proliferation of mobile phones in prisons, over-reliance on witnesses rather than forensics by the police and a lack of information sharing between civil and military intelligence agencies are just some of the major weaknesses and problems encountered in Pakistan’s anti-terrorism investigations.

Institutionalised corruption and political interference has also seriously undermined the capacity of civilian law enforcement agencies to tackle the terrorist threat. The government administrations have therefore proved to be poorly equipped to cope with the demands of unconventional warfare and have failed to systematically dismantle sleeper-cells within the country.

This attack is likely to have serious repercussions within and beyond Pakistani territory. At the domestic level the public – already fed up with perennial energy crisis and rising inflation – is bound to lose whatever faith it may have had in the government’s current approach to tackling internal security threats. None of this bodes well for the democratic process in a country that has had 32 years of military rule since its creation 67 years ago.

Talat Farooq is a Research Associate at University of Birmingham.

Pakistani Taliban storms airbase near Peshawar

Peshawar army school reopens after massacre

Pakistan school attack: years of inaction on terror led to this atrocity

KNOW US

GET INVOLVED

PROMOTE

Archives