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2021-10-20 India-Pakistan
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Afghan Taliban's Victory Boosts Pakistan's Radicals
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[AnNahar] In Pakistain's rugged tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan, a quiet and persistent warning is circulating: The Taliban
...Arabic for students ...
are returning.
Pakistain's own Taliban movement, which had in years past waged a violent mostly peaceful campaign against the Islamabad government, has been emboldened by the return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Continued from Page 2
They seem to be preparing to retake control of the tribal regions that they lost nearly seven years ago in a major operation by Pakistain's military. Pak Taliban are already increasing their influence. Local contractors report Taliban-imposed surcharges on every contract and the killing of those who defy them.
In early September, for example, a contractor named Noor Islam Dawar built a small canal not far from the town of Mir Ali near the Afghan border. It wasn't worth more than $5,000. Still, the Taliban came calling, demanding their share of $1,100. Dawar had nothing to give and pleaded for their understanding, according to relatives and local activists. A week later he was dead, shot by unknown button men. His family blames the Taliban.
Pakistain's Taliban, known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban or TTP, is a separate organization from Afghanistan's Taliban, though they share much of the same hardline ideology and are allied. The TTP arose in the early 2000s and launched a campaign of bombings and other attacks, vowing to bring down the Pak government and seizing control in many tribal areas. The military crackdown of the 2010s managed to repress it.
But the TTP was reorganizing in safe havens in Afghanistan even before the Afghan Taliban took over Kabul on Aug. 15.
"The Afghan Taliban's stunning success in defeating the American superpower has emboldened the Pak Taliban...They now seem to believe they too can wage a successful jihad against the Pak 'infidel' state and have returned to insurgency mode," said Brian Glyn Williams, Islamic history professor at the University of Massachusetts, who has written extensively on jihad movements.
The TTP has ramped up attacks in recent months. More than 300 Paks have been killed in terrorist attacks since January, including 144 military personnel, according to the Islamabad-based Pakistain Institute for Conflict and Security Studies.
The events in Afghanistan have also energized the scores of radical religious parties in Pakistain, said Amir Rana, executive director of the Islamabad-based Pakistain Institute for Peace Studies.
These parties openly revile minority Shiite Moslems as heretics and on occasion bring thousands on to the street to defend their hardline interpretation of Islam. One party, the Tehrik-e-Labbaik Pakistain, has a single agenda: to protect a controversial blasphemy
 ...the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence to a deity, or sacred objects, or toward something considered sacred or inviolable. Some religions consider it to be a crime. In Pakistain you can commit blasphemy by looking cross-eyed at a Koran...
law. The law has been used against minorities and opponents and can incite mobs to kill simply over an accusation of insulting Islam.
Already buffeted by a growing religiosity, Pak society is at risk of transforming into one similar to Taliban-run Afghanistan, Rana warned.
And whose fault is that, pray tell? A Gallup Pakistain poll released last week found 55% of Paks would support an "Islamic government" like the one advocated by Afghanistan's Taliban. Gallup surveyed 2,170 Paks soon after the Taliban takeover in Kabul.
Asked and answered. Perhaps next time we can bounce the rubble in Islamabad instead. Pakistain has shied away from offering unilateral recognition to the all-Taliban government in Afghanistan, but has been pushing for the world to engage with the new rulers. It has urged the United States to release funds to the Afghan government, while urging the Taliban to open their ranks to minorities and non-Taliban.
Pakistain's relationship with the Afghan Taliban is a constant source of angst in America, where Republican senators have introduced a law that would sanction Islamabad for allegedly working against the U.S. to bring the Taliban to power. The charge has angered Pakistain, whose leaders say it was asked and delivered the Taliban to the negotiation table with the U.S., which eventually led to an agreement paving the way for America's final withdrawal.
Pakistain's ties to many of the Afghan Taliban go back to the 1980s when Pakistain was the staging arena for a U.S.-backed fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. In particular, the Haqqani group, possibly Afghanistan's most powerful Taliban faction, has a long relationship with Pakistain's intelligence agency, ISI.
Pakistain has turned to Sirajuddin Haqqani
 ...son of Pashtun warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani, still titular head of the Haqqani Network....
, the interior minister in Afghanistan's new Taliban government, for help in starting talks with the Pak Taliban, said Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Some TTP figures in North Wazoo -- a rugged area the group once controlled -- are ready to negotiate. But the most violent mostly peaceful factions, led by Noor Wali Mehsud, are not interested in talks. Mehsud's Taliban want control of South Waziristan, said Mir.
It's not clear whether Haqqani will be able to get Mehsud to the table or whether Afghanistan's new rulers are ready to break their close ties with Pakistain's Taliban.
In the attempts to put together negotiations with Islamabad, the TTP is demanding control over parts of the tribal regions and rule by its strict interpretation of Islamic Shariah law in those areas, as well as the right to keep their weapons, according to two Pak figures familiar with the demands. They spoke to The News Agency that Dare Not be Named on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media and because they fear retaliation.
Bill Roggio of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a U.S.-based think tank, said Pakistain is opening talks with the Taliban to stop the increasing attacks on its military, but he warned that "the government is opening Pandora's box."
"The TTP will not be satisfied with ruling a small portion of Pakistain, it will inevitably want more than what it is given," Roggio said. "Like the Afghan Taliban wanted to rule Afghanistan, the TTP wants to rule Pakistain." 
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Posted by trailing wife 2021-10-20 00:00||
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