Delhi, India:The Pakistani Taliban have instructed their fighters to carry out attacks throughout the country, breaking a fragile ceasefire that they had agreed to with the government in June.
Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) made the declaration a day before General Asim Munir was appointed as the new chief of the army. Munir is taking over the military at a time when its popularity and reputation have been severely damaged.
In the meantime, the power struggle that is currently taking place in Islamabad between the current Prime Minister of Pakistan Shehbaz Sharif and the former Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan is shaping up to be a full-blown conflagration that has the potential to further plunge the financially strapped nation into trouble.
An encouraged TTP
The TTP was established in 2007 by Pakistani jihadists who battled close by the Taliban in Afghanistan during the 1990s prior to contradicting Islamabad's help for American mediation there after the September 11, 2001, assaults in New York.
Despite being a distinct organization, the TTP is a ally of the Afghanistan Taliban, who seized power in Kabul more than a year ago as US and NATO troops were nearing the end of their withdrawal.
The TTP, whose top leaders and fighters are hiding in Afghanistan, was strengthened by the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan.
According to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, Pakistan's number of terrorist attacks has increased by 51% in the exact year since the Taliban took control of Kabul.
Between 15 August 2021 and 14 August 2022, there were 250 attacks, resulting in 433 deaths and 719 injuries.Additionally, this entails a 47% rise in fatalities compared to the previous year.
In the past three months, 132 terrorist attacks have been reported, 50 of which occurred in November alone.The TTP has led this wave from the beginning.The Balochistan Liberation Front and Islamic State – Khorasan Province, more commonly referred to as Daesh, were the two other major perpetrators.
A crisis of its own making The Pakistani government aided the Afghan Taliban by providing them with support while US and NATO troops controlled Kabul.
Pakistan stood out among the various foreign powers working to maintain and manipulate the fighting in Afghanistan by the scope and breadth of its objectives.
It requested assets for the Taliban, bankrolled Taliban tasks, offered strategic help as the Taliban's virtual messengers abroad, organized preparing for Taliban warriors, selected gifted and untalented labor to serve in Taliban armed forces, arranged and coordinated offensives, gave and worked with shipments of ammo and fuel, and on a few events clearly straightforwardly gave battle support.
The TTP ruled vast swaths of Pakistan's rugged tribal belt for the first seven years, enforcing radical Islamic law and patrolling territory just 140 kilometers from Islamabad.
After terrorists killed nearly 150 people, the majority of whom were students, during a raid on a school for the children of army personnel in 2014, the Pakistani military took a strong stance against the TTP.
Islamabad claims that the Taliban in Kabul are now giving the TTP a foothold to stage assaults across the border, despite the fact that the majority of its fighters were routed into Afghanistan.
Review of the country's new army chief and strategy One of the most important challenges for the country's new army chief, General Asim Munir, will be how to deal with the latest Pakistani Taliban threat.
On November 29, a day after the TTP's declaration, Munir, a former spymaster, succeeded General Qamar Javed Bajwa.
During his time in office, Bajwa had authorized a series of actions against the militants with the intention of driving them out of the country's former northwestern tribal regions, which were bordered by Afghanistan.Additionally, earlier this year, he had initiated peace talks with the TTP.
At this point, Munir's approach to the militant group is unclear.
In the meantime, the political leadership has indicated that it is willing to alter its approach to the terrorist organization.
In October, the service of inside had given a cross country aware of specialists to keep up with "outrageous watchfulness" in the midst of an elevated gamble of fear based oppressor assaults by the TTP after harmony chats with the gathering had slowed down.
The threat of TTP subgroups defecting to the Islamic State or joining forces with other groups to resume terror attacks had also been emphasized by the ministry.
"Earlier this month, foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari urged the government to reconsider its strategy for dealing with the militant organization."He had stated, "It is time to review decisions we made or were made to make regarding internal security and terrorism."
According to Bilawal, stating that "we were wrong about a few things and right about some other things and re-examine our approach" was acceptable was not incorrect.
The terrorist organization and Pakistani officials began holding peace talks in October of last year, but they fell apart in December.
Later, in May of this year, these resumed.However, a deadlock on the revocation of the merger of the former tribal areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) caused the process to break down once more.
As a result, the TTP's attacks have increased.KP's Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, South Waziristan, and North Waziristan districts have seen the majority of attacks.
The group claimed less than two weeks ago that they were planning a "raid" on their base in the area when they ambushed and killed six police officers in northwest Pakistan.
Helicopter gunships have been shelling the terrorists' hideouts as the military has been patrolling the area since Friday in an effort to eliminate them.
In a statement released on Monday, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) stated that "a series of non-stop attacks were launched by the military in Bannu's Lakki Marwat district" prompted the decision to end the ceasefire.
The TTP, a different element from the Taliban in Afghanistan however sharing a comparable Islamist philosophy, said: "We must carry out attacks wherever we can throughout the entire country because military operations against mujahideen are ongoing in various areas.
The banned group claimed to have "continued to be patient so that the negotiation process is not sabotaged at least by us" and issued numerous warnings to Pakistanis.
In the statement, it was stated that "but the army and intelligence agencies did not stop and continued the attacks... now our retaliatory attacks will also start."
Major TTP attacks Since its inception in 2007, the TTP has been responsible for hundreds of attacks and thousands of deaths in Pakistan.
Although the group denies the accusation, the Pakistani government said that the network was involved in Benazir Bhutto's death in December 2007.
The group, which has been linked to al-Qaida, has been blamed for a number of deadly attacks in Pakistan, including the 2009 attack on the army headquarters, assaults on military bases, and the 2008 bombing of the Islamabad Marriott Hotel.
Maulvi Umar, a TTP spokesperson, claimed responsibility for the 2008 Dera Ismail Khan suicide bombing, which resulted in the deaths of 32 people.
TTP attacked Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai in 2012.She was taken to London for further treatment after being admitted to the Military Hospital (CMH) Peshawar with bullet wounds.The TTP attributed the attack to Yousafzai, claiming that she was a "Western-minded girl."
At least 150 people, including 131 students, were killed when the Pakistani Taliban stormed the Army Public School (APS) in the northwestern city of Peshawar in 2014.The attack was widely condemned and caused shockwaves all over the world.
About 83,000 people have been killed by the TTP;Since 2006, mainly innocent people have been forced from their homes and development that they oppose has been stalled in order to maintain their hold, according to the International Forum for Rights and Security.
It has between 4,000 and 6,500 fighters in Afghanistan, according to UN estimates.It has spread to Pakistani cities and beyond the tribal belt.