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Articles on Peshawar Attack

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#1 [Permalink] Posted on 19th December 2014 17:23
I know there exists already a thread on the barbaric massacre 3 days ago, but I wanted to make this seperate one to not take the spotlight from the condolences and condemnations of this heinous crime on humanity in the old thread. I will just like to share some beneficial articles on the happenings...

Weep Peshawar: What do the Pakistani Taliban Want?
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Nothing justifies the murder, incarceration or torture of children. No matter how bad it gets, no matter what epic oppression has been perpetrated over centuries or decades, no matter what the end goal - if there’s a tacit universal behavioural mandate - this is it. So, what did the Pakistani Taliban, a group of factions who’ve been fighting to topple the government aim to achieve? And how did it all go so wrong? Is it just an oversimplistic adage wherein you drone the smack out of innocent villagers for a decade and then find some of them went crazy & started doing the same? umm Abdillah unpacks a few background pointers to what has been described as the worst militant attack in the country in years.

The city of Peshawar in northern Pakistan is reeling in the wake of a deadly terror attack wherein gunmen killed a total of 141 people including 132 students and nine staff members. 133 others were injured. The rampage at the Army Public School and College began on Tuesday morning when seven militants scaled a back wall using a ladder, according to Maj. Gen. Asim Bajwa, a military spokesman. When they reached an auditorium where students had gathered for an event, they allegedly opened fire. More than 1000 students and staff are registered at the school, which is part of a network run by the military. The student body is made up of both children of military personnel as well as civilians. Responding to the attack, armoured personnel carriers were deployed around the school, and a military helicopter circled overhead. The seven attackers, wearing explosive vests, all died in the eight-hour assault.

The Pakistan Taliban (formally known as Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP) has claimed responsibility. We’re told they chose the Army Public School and Degree College because most of the city’s army personnel have their children enrolled at the school. These teenagers became intergenerational casualties in an ongoing fight between the militants and Pakistani military.

"We selected the army's school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females," said TTP spokesman Muhammad Umar Khurasani. "We want them to feel the pain."

The TTP emerged as a result of the Pakistani army’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) operation in 2002, which together with the US, indiscriminately hunted down militant groups along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. This is the area in which most drone strikes take place. In 2007, more than a dozen factions based in different parts of northwest Pakistan formed a loose alliance, called the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), to fight against the Pakistani military. The group was initially led by Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed by a missile-firing US drone in South Waziristan in August 2009. He was replaced by Hakimullah Mehsud, who was killed in a US drone strike in November 2013. The head of the TTP, Mullah Fazlullah, is believed to be in north-eastern Afghanistan. Some within the Pakistani security establishment remain convinced that Delhi is backing his campaigns. Mohammed Khurasani, the spokesman who claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack, has been in the job for only a few weeks.

Driven by a deep sense of insecurity regarding Afghanistan and India, Pakistan has pursued a strategy that incorporates conventional elements of deterrence—they have the world’s 6th largest army and the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal— but they also use shady militant groups that allow harassment of its rivals while maintaining a thin fiction of deniability. Officials in both Afghanistan and India have repeatedly accused Pakistan of having a dirty history - harbouring militants responsible for a string of strikes in their own countries and also allowing the US to indiscriminately bomb Pakistani civilians. At the same time they allow Afghan Taliban leadership and other insurgent groups to operate from Pakistan. Then there’s the backdrop of the continuing power struggle in Pakistan between the army generals and the elected civilian government. Indicative of this, is that Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister, and Raheel Sharif, the army chief, both flew to Peshawar but did not travel together.

More than 400 drone strikes have hit the tribal regions of north-west Pakistan since 2004. Only 704 of the 2,379 dead have been identified, and only 295 of these were reported to be members of some kind of armed group. Few corroborating details are available for those who were just described as militants. More than a third of them were not designated a rank, and almost 30% are not even linked to a specific group. Only 84 are identified as members of al Qaeda – less than 4% of the total number of people killed.

According to Reuters, an Afghan Taliban spokesperson has spoken out against the TTP: “The intentional killing of innocent people, children and women are against the basics of Islam and this criteria has to be considered by every Islamic party and government,” said Zabihullah Mujahid in a statement.

The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, has declared three days of mourning over the massacre. He also announced an end to the moratorium on the death penalty for terrorism cases, a move aimed at countering a view held by many Pakistanis that terror suspects end up evading justice.

No doubt the immediate reaction from the Pakistani military will be swift and awful, with hundreds more casualties. It remains to be seen whether Pakistan will continue to treat militant groups as assets to use against its regional rivals. It also remains to be seen whether massacres like this will make the Pakistani state realise that an asymmetric warfare strategy left her children unprotected.
umm Abdillah, Radio Islam Programming | 2014.12.17 | 24 Safar 1436 AH
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#2 [Permalink] Posted on 19th December 2014 17:29
Real Taliban vs Fake Taliban
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They departed from home in school uniforms and returned in coffins.

A cowardly attack at a Peshawar school has left at least 130 people, most of them students, dead, sending shockwaves all around the globe.

“Horrific, callous killing,” “unspeakable brutality,” coldblooded murder” are some of the reactions the incident has rightfully evoked from a large spectrum of individuals drawn from all segments of society.

“This is a national tragedy. These were my kids. This is my loss. The Peshawar attack is an absolutely cowardly act,” Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said of the murder.

“The government, in collaboration with Pakistan’s army will take the decision on fighting terrorism. We won’t stop until terrorism is stopped.”

The innocence of the youthful victims has magnified the pain of this crisis; the imagined spectre of parents finding their own children meeting a similarly callous end has meant that the incident has struck a deep sentimental chord among ordinary citizens globally.

However, as the scale of the brutality is digested and disgust at the actions of the perpetrators is amplified, a leading commentator on Pakistani politics has cautioned the public to be careful in apportioning blame to the correct quarters.

Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, a retired high-ranking general officer in the Pakistan Army, and a former head of the highly influential Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) told Cii Radio Wednesday that a clear distinction needed to be drawn between the Afghan Taliban and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan(TTP), who have claimed responsibility for the attack.

Most mainstream media outlets have reported the atrocity to be the handiwork of the Taliban without explaining the nuances associated with the name.

“There is a terrible confusion being caused because of the name,” Gul lamented.”Somewhere between George W. Bush and the CIA, a decision was made by the Americans to create their ‘own Taliban’. And so they did.”

“But these are not the ones who are fighting for the freedom of their country which is a legitimate right,” he added. “These people are real terrorists. They are killing Muslims.”


The authoritative commentator said the philosophy of the Tehreek-e-Taliban was far flung from true Islam and a mockery of established Islamic rules of Jihad.

“This is sheer tyranny. Tyranny inspired by American policies and Pakistan succumbing to those policies way back in 2001. Pakistan, willy nilly, accepted all the conditions the Americans imposed upon us. That is the long and short of the story”.

Gul opined that the latest manifestations of instability were part of the machinations of a US-Indian-Israeli axis that seeks to keep Pakistan perpetually weak.

“Yesterday we also marked the anniversary of the fall of Dhaka where our country was severed into two halves. This was a very great blow to Pakistan. Now, such violent actions in Pakistan are being sponsored from across the border. We know that two terrorists, Fazlullah and Khorasani were both harboured in Afghanistan for a long period of time. They are being financed by India – Pakistan has concrete information about this. So there is nothing new. It is like the old East Pakistan/Bangladesh story repeating itself. Mukti Bahini, called the liberation force at the time, had actually trained beforehand and were then launched, creating a fertile ground for the entry of India, which it did when its forces marched in. So it is a similar situation now, even though these people have their own anger perhaps and distorted philosophy, the people who are giving them the direction are the same elements who had caused us this pain on this very day”.

He added that India’s right wing Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, had gone on record previously saying that he seeks to inflict maximum pain on Pakistan.

Gul said Pakistan had grown accustomed to externally orchestrated violence on its soil since the time of the Soviets, and with a firm national resolve, would be able to thwart the latest round of terror.

A positive spinoff of this attack, he said, was the Pakistani nation’s collective rallying against the attack and its perpetrators.

“I hope we begin to see that the problem lies with our foreign policy and with the aggression of the Americans. They are not letting up and now they are again upto mischief in Afghanistan, and as long as they are sitting there, the trouble will go on in Afghanistan, we will suffer and they will suffer”.

The retired general however warned of the potential such incidents, if they occur consistently, could have on setting entire region – a hub of nuclear powers – ablaze.

“If the conflict continues to grow, there will be an inferno, so large that neither East nor West would be able to contain it”.

On Tuesday, the Afghan Taliban unequivocally condemned the Pakistan school attack.

“The intentional killing of innocent people, women and children goes against the principles of Islam and every Islamic government and movement must adhere to this fundamental essence,” Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has always condemned the killing of children and innocent people at every juncture,” the Afghan Taliban’s statement continued.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan expresses its condolences over the incident and mourns with the families of killed children.”

Commenting on its alleged links with the TTP(Pakistani Taliban), in 2009, an Afghan Taliban spokesman told The New York Times: “We don’t like to be involved with them (TTP), as we have rejected all affiliation with Pakistani Taliban fighters…We have sympathy for them as Muslims, but beside that, there is nothing else between us.”
Cii News | 24 Safar 1436/17 December 2014
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#3 [Permalink] Posted on 19th December 2014 18:29
Responding to the massacre: Revenge or resolution?
A military response to the Peshawar massacre will produce only more violence in Pakistan.
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The horrific attack on a school in Peshawar has led to much questioning within Pakistan. The heinous, cold-blooded murder of innocent children has led to extreme anger in the country, but any concerted action is bound to be mired in heated discussions on where to place the blame for this atrocity.

This might seem an odd dilemma given the fact that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has been quick to claim responsibility for this attack. The bigger problem is that there is no clarity about who and what the TTP is. There are competing narratives, and hence competing solutions.

A military response?

There are many unanswered questions about the TTP. How big is the group? Have its ties to the Pakistani intelligence agencies become stronger since Mullah Fazlullah, of Swat fame, became its leader, given his own past affiliation with Pakistan's powerful spy agency ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence)? Or is the group closer now to other foreign funders?

Why do the Afghan Taliban continue to vehemently disassociate themselves from the TTP, particularly since Fazlullah took command of the group, going as far as condemning the Peshawar massacre? How many of the 1,600 killed by the Pakistani army in the last five months of operations in the tribal areas were affiliated with the TTP? What were their names and what roles did they play in the organisation?
Inside story- How will Pakistan deal with armed groups?

The absence of convincing answers to such questions has resulted in ongoing debates on the appropriate response to this horror. From US-backed media personalities supporting the establishment of concentration camps for entire populations in some parts of the tribal areas, to the broadening of ongoing military operations, the overwhelming thrust among many vocal commentators has been for countering this violence with more violence.

However, there is also a deep scepticism about a primarily military response within the Pakistani society, which is why successive governments have been secretive about such operations. Despite repeated calls for stronger military action by the US government and also many influential commentators within Pakistan, there is widespread suspicion that these army operations end up killing more civilians than militants.

It is easy, but completely misleading, to write off this widespread scepticism about military responses to the Taliban violence as driven by sympathetic sentiments or worse, as the inability of Pakistanis to face the hard facts of home-grown terror. We must recognise that it is a mistrust borne of experience with the military's role in Pakistani politics.

More critically, we need to recognise the long-term impact of the Pakistani state's support for the "war on terror" and its operations in the tribal areas over the last decade. There is a growing sense of deprivation and discrimination among Pashtuns across the country, and further state violence in the region has to be carefully weighed against the very real possibility of serious backlash.

While we all agree that there must be a response to these atrocities, for it to be effective, both at the state and societal level, it is imperative that it is calibrated to the level of threat posed by wide range of groups contained within the category "Taliban".

Militant organisations

There seem to be four main types of militant organisations operating in the tribal areas of Pakistan. First, there is the state-funded militia primarily affiliated with the shadowy ISI. There is also the foreign-funded militia including those who act as subcontractors to US armed forces and their own shadowy intelligence agencies. Criminals and mercenaries with minimal ideological baggage are also capitalising on the chaotic situation; they attempt to control specific regions and dominate a segment of the lucrative NATO supply routes. And finally there are the local defence Lashkars (militias) raised in response to the first two, such as the one in Parachinar in 2007.

All four are a direct result of the chaos created by the US' war in the region and the supply of drugs, arms and men that such a war invariably engenders. But these four groups all require different responses. The local defence militias can be ignored for now. The mercenaries and criminals need to be treated precisely as that: controlling and managing their sources of incomes or in some cases, completely eroding them.

However, the first two groups require a much broader and more complex response. There is, unfortunately, no short-cut to political transparency that is required for their dismantling.

Aggressive and persistent public questioning and scrutiny of Pakistani generals and politicians associated with the state funded militia, as well as their support for the "war on terror" in the region, is the only viable strategy available to citizens of Pakistan for a lasting resolution. In this context, the religious vs secular binary is completely artificial. The most secular generals of the Pakistani army have been happy to support some versions of Taliban as well as to benefit financially and politically by supporting the US war in the region.

A key step in this direction has to be the demand for greater information about the militants who attacked the school in Peshawar. Although TTP has claimed responsibility for the tragedy, it is important to establish who precisely is involved. How did they get past the three check points in the defence colony where the school is located? Which cities/villages did the militants who were killed come from? How does that correspond to the profiles of the attackers in the past? Where is that information about past attackers anyway? What are their organisational careers and educational backgrounds? Where are their families, and what can they tell us about the path their sons took?

Calling on the very same generals to carry out military operations against the operatives they have supported and created is surely a strategy fraught with contradictions, though favoured by some vocal analysts and by the US government. The collective punishment of the people of the tribal areas as a "solution" may appeal to some because of its deceptive simplicity, but it is an extremely dangerous strategy likely to further shred the fabric of Pakistani public life.
Source: Al Jazeera
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