Swat Analysis: Taliban Retaliation, Tribal Backlash and 'Greater Pakhtunistan' Buzz

By Animesh Roul

'Swat Analysis’ is a Daily brief on the resurgent Taliban and their safe sanctuaries in Pakistan. The brief will be posted in regular intervals focusing on the developments in Swat province, NWPF and other Taliban hotspots.

Taliban’s footprints have reached capital Islamabad after over a month long Swat offensive. As threatened earlier, Taliban militants have carried out retaliatory attacks with series of bombings across Pakistan’s northwest and major cities.

On Saturday, June 06, at least two people were killed in a suicide attack on a police emergency response unit in the national capital, Islamabad. A day earlier, Taliban suicide bomber struck a mosque located in Hayagai Sharqai village of Upper Dir district (NWFP) killing nearly 40 people, including 12 children.The Dir mosque mayhem received widespread condemnations. The United Nation Chief Ban Ki-moon too condemned this ‘indiscriminate and reprehensible acts of violence.’

Besides indiscriminate suicide attacks, suspected Taliban militants are also resorting to parcel /letter bombs. In Khyaban-e-Rahat area of Karachi, a political leader Yaqub Bizenjo (of Balochistan National Party (Awami)) was among four people injured when a parcel bomb exploded in Bizenjo’s house.

Even though the Karachi attack was not of high intensity and the Islamabad attack was foiled before it could create bloodbath, the fear of Taliban reaching fortified cities of Pakistan has now become a deadly reality. Both Islamabad and the garrison city of Rawalpindi have been on the Taliban terror radar since long and recently security forces unearthed a cell comprising ten suicide bombers and their handlers in this twin city area. These two places are considered as high value target for Taliban militants now.

In the latest round of violence, Amir Izzat Khan and Mohammad Alam, two senior leaders of TNSM and close aides of Sufi Mohammad were killed. However, no senior Taliban leaders have so far been captured alive or killed in the battle.

The government has claimed that Mingora, Kalam, Buner and Mardan have been completely cleared by security forces. But recent spurt of Taliban violence in Buner and Mardan shows that there is still a strong force of Taliban element has been operating in these areas. Taliban forces are still resorting to guerilla war tactics carrying out ambush on army convoys in these areas.

The villagers of Upper Dir area had reportedly opposed Taliban earlier and now Pakistan's military is increasingly using the public disenchantment against Taliban forces in the tribal dominated areas of Waziristan and NWFP. In a first such instance, a group of Tribal lashkars (militia) have attacked Taliban militants following the mosque blast and killed at least 13 of them and destroyed their hideouts in Upper Dir.

Another development occurred in NWFP which reinforces the fear of a possible disintegration of Pakistan. Pakistan government is now taking seriously the buzz of “Greater Pakhtunistan” which has been doing the rounds in Bannu and Lakki Marwat districts of the NWFP. There were signboards depicting maps of ‘Greater Pakhtunistan’ which sparked controversy in November last year in NWFP. Greater Pakhtunistan’ is a controversial movement or idea for an independent country constituting the Pashtun dominated areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. However, whether the current buzz is for a separate Pakhtun state to be carved or just for Pakhtunkhwa (by renaming NWFP), is not clear.