2015 brought the educated terrorist to Karachi

Karachi

The law-enforcement agencies were successful in shattering the network of Taliban militants in Karachi in 2015 but they had to deal with an emerging menace — self-radicalised, educated militants in the affluent neighbourhoods of the city.

The law-enforcement agencies’ crackdown on terrorism in the city led to a significant decrease in militant activities

Karachi is considered a key area in the nexus of terrorism in the country because it has become the hub of militants’ fundraising and alliances.

Law-enforcement officials, security analysts, and Pashtun activists say that the network of various Taliban factions weakened in 2015 because of the ongoing operation.

Since June 2012, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan was controlling Pashtun-populated areas of the city.

The Taliban had turned these neighbourhoods into “no-go areas” for the law-enforcement agencies and liberal political parties and terrorising their residents by extorting and kidnapping them, generating funds for the militants fighting in the tribal areas.

Sahib Gul, who migrated to Karachi from Khwezi in Mohmand tribal agency in 1970, peacefully ran a timber business in Korangi’s Bilal Colony until June 2012.

Since then, he was forced to ‘donate’ 20 percent of his income to the TTP Mohmand chapter’s Karachi leadership.

However, Gul breathed a sigh of relief in January 2015 when the law-enforcement agencies, especially Rangers, killed several Mohmand Taliban militants in Karachi.

 “Indeed, 2015 from its start proved to be a good year for Pashtuns and political activists as the law enforcement agencies started taking actual measures against the Taliban in Karachi after the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar in December 2014,” Gul told The News.

Raja Umer Khattab, a leading counter-terrorism police official in Karachi, said the law-enforcement agencies in their ongoing operation had killed most of the key Taliban leaders in the city in 2015.

“The control-and-command of South Wazirstan, Swat and Mohmand chapters of the TTP operating in the city has been shattered, their hideouts destroyed and this resulted in an 80 percent decrease in militant activities in 2015,” Khattab told The News.

Taliban militants have mostly targeted police and the Awami National Party in Karachi.

TTP Swat militants have killed several policemen and over 100 ANP activists, including its district presidents, in the last two years, ANP leaders claimed.

Muhammad Amir Rana, the director of Islamabad-based Pak Institute for Peace Studies, said the security situation in Karachi had improved in 2015 because of the crackdown on Taliban groups’.

Citing  PIPS’ recent statistics, Rana said a 61 percent decrease in terrorist attacks in Karachi was witnessed in 2015 in comparison with 2014.

 

Self-radicalised groups

In 2015, the law enforcement agencies had to put up with a new phenomenon in Karachi, involvement of young men who had graduated from prestigious universities, in terrorists activities.

These men were affiliating themselves with international jihadist networks including al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Their presence first surfaced when police had arrested suspects in connection with an attack Safoora Goth in May wherein 47 members of the Ismaili community travelling in a bus were shot dead.

Khattab said this new trend was a major challenge for the law-enforcement agencies in 2015.

Rana said groups associated with international jihadist networks were working at academic institutions and had been recruiting middle- and upper-middle class students for years but the issue went underreported for many reasons including the focus remaining primarily on the TTP and madrassas. “It’s a new brand of militancy in the country and gradually growing,” Rana told The News. “They are self-radicalised individuals who are mainly influenced by militant ideologies and not formally affiliated with any local or global militant network.