ISLAMABAD: Investigators probing the recent spate of suicide bombings in Mohmand Agency, Darra Adam Khel and other Tribal Areas believe that these attacks are part of a Taliban strategy to reclaim the ground they lost to security forces after the successful military operations.
The investigators also anticipate more such assaults in the days to come as part of the strategy recently devised by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), patronised Al Qaeda. Officials privy to the ongoing probe said the militants taken into custody in the last couple of months revealed that such attacks by the Taliban were meant to re-assert themselves where they were evicted by the military.
“These militants once held sway in Mohmand, but a few months back they were almost flushed out from the agency along with the adjacent Bajaur Agency,” an official said. He said a similar case was evident in Khyber Agency, where the TTP was making acts of subversion.
He said, “Apart from what we got from interrogating arrested militants, intelligence suggests that Al Qaeda is behind the TTP strategy.” He said it was since October 2008 that the Taliban were deploying suicide bombers against tribal lashkars.
An intelligence official said the information from the Tribal Areas suggested that such attacks were likely to occur in settled areas as well.
“The Taliban have been attacking pro-government tribal elders in various Tribal Areas and influential figures in Swat and they plan to start targeting the security forces later,” he said.
Pakistan loses credibility in battle against Taliban
ISLAMABAD: The government in Pakistan is overlooking the scale of civilian casualties in its war against militants and will lose credibility unless it acts to ease the suffering, a report by a US pressure group said.
The Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), due to release its study in Islamabad on Thursday, says there were likely more civilian casualties in Pakistan in 2009 than in neighbouring Afghanistan.
“Despite the severity of losses and consequences of ignoring them, civilian casualties receive too little attention from US, Pakistani and donor-nation policy-makers, military officials and international organisations alike,” said CIVIC. Reuters
