Militant groups finding new ways to evade crackdown

Shifting hideouts from suburban areas to congested Old City, splitting up into smaller cells

Monday night’s shootout between Rangers soldiers and suspected militants in the Urdu Bazaar locality suggests that various banned groups have been adopting new strategies to escape the ongoing crackdown on them.

They have been found to be shifting their hideouts from Pashtun-dominated suburban localities to congested parts of the Old City as well as splitting up into smaller cells, some of whom then join up with other banned groups.

On Wednesday evening, residents and traders in the Urdu Bazaar neighbourhood, famous for housing the city’s oldest and premier book market, discussed the exchange of fire between Rangers soldiers and suspected militants.

The paramilitary force killed four members of the proscribed Jundullah in the shootout, an announcement issued by the Inter-Services Public Relations had stated on Tuesday.

For shopkeeper Muhammad Ali, who has been living in the Urdu Bazaar area for the past three decades, said that it was the first incident of militants’ presence in the locality.

“Because our area, an Urdu- and Gujarati-speaking neighbourhood, was a stronghold of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, we initially thought the Rangers were here to arrest the party’s militants,” Ali told The News. “But we found out later that hardcore Taliban militants were residing in our locality.”

Shifting hideouts

Investigation in the case suggests that the militants killed in the shootout – Zahid Afridi, with the aliases of Faheem and Hameed, Muhammad Hafeez Ullah Quettawal, Naeem, alias Mama, and Afshan, a facilitator – moved to the Urdu Bazaar area three months ago and rented a flat.

Until the end of 2013, impoverished and lower-income Pashtun neighbourhoods, especially Manghopir, Ittehad Town, Sohrab Goth and Gulshan-e-Buner, were considered the most dangerous areas of the city because of strong Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) presence.

However, after successful crackdown on the TTP and other affiliated militant outfits, law-enforcement and security agencies, especially the Rangers, have been in strong presence and have established their intelligence networks in the militants’ former strongholds.

A senior paramilitary official, who oversees the Manghopir area, said: “Even though the ongoing operation has cleared the area of militant groups, we still man security pickets and run an active intelligence network with the coordination of the local community elders, which is why they [militants] can’t hide in these areas now.”

A Mehsud tribal elder in Manghopir corroborated the claim: “I know that the crackdown in the past two and a half years has weakened the TTP factions and killed most of the key Taliban commanders.”

Senior Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) official Raja Umer Khattab said that because Pashtun-populated suburban localities were in the spotlight of the law-enforcement agencies, militant groups had now shifted their hideouts to non-Pashtun areas, such as Urdu Bazaar.

“They [militants] want to dodge the law-enforcement agencies, but because of strong intelligence networks, they were caught even in such an area.”

Splitting up

Investigation into the Urdu Bazaar shootout suggests that militants have split up into other outfits as part of their strategy to escape the crackdown and dodge the law-enforcement and security agencies.

According to CTD sources, Zahid Afridi, one of the militants killed in the shootout, was associated with the TTP’s Swat chapter in Karachi. After the launch of crackdown in the city, he joined Jundullah and moved to Wadh in Balochistan’s District Khuzdar, where he closely worked with the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and al-Qaeda.

However, after the launch of an operation in Wadh, following subversive attacks in northern Sindh, Afridi moved to Karachi and found residence in the Urdu Bazaar locality.