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| India-Pakistan |
| TTP in Afghanistan |
| 2017-02-14 |
| [DAWN] AMONG the many complexities of militancy in the Pak-Afghan border region, there is a relatively straightforward reality. The inability -- or partial unwillingness, as some in Pak security circles suspect -- of both the Afghan government and US forces to move decisively against faceless myrmidons belonging to the banned TTP, who have found sanctuary in eastern Afghanistan, has allowed the threat to metastasise in a way that poses a serious, new danger to both countries. In a testimony before the US Senate Armed Forces Committee last week, Gen John Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, claimed that TTP faceless myrmidons from Orakzai Agency ... crawling with holy men, home to Darra Adam Khel, the world's largest illegal arms bazaar. 14 distinct tribes of beturbanned primitives inhabit Orakzai agency's 1500 or so square kilometers... have formed the core of the bully boy Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... group in Afghanistan, expanding from a small footprint in Nangarhar The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country.. province to a presence in several parts of the country. The evolution is unsurprising: TTP factions have been notoriously violent, in some case predating the terror tactics of IS in the Middle East; the TTP has always had a pan-Islamist outlook, rejecting a focus on merely Pakistain, and many of the constituent units originally gathered under its umbrella have a virulent sectarian strain. Moreover, the ingress into Afghanistan was predictable: IS had early on shown a historical interest in Afghanistan, while large-scale military operations in Fata with poor border management and coordination between Afghanistan and Pakistain made it almost inevitable that the TTP would try and relocate to Afghanistan. If the bully boy linkages are by now well known, what Gen Nicholson’s comments have perhaps unwittingly helped shed light on is the role of Afghanistan and the US in allowing a once manageable problem to grow quickly. By their inaction, despite Pakistain’s urgent appeals in recent years, Afghan and US forces inadvertently allowed the TTP to morph into IS. True, US drones have killed two of three supreme TTP leaders, and Afghan forces have launched the occasional raid on TTP sanctuaries in eastern Afghanistan. But far more evident has been the reluctance to prioritise the fight against TTP/IS. Indeed, Pak officials have publicly and privately voiced their concern that elements within the TTP based in Afghanistan are regarded by Kabul ...the capital of Afghanistan. Home to continuous fighting from 1992 to 1996 between the forces of would-be strongman and Pak ISI/Jamaat-e-Islami sock puppet Gulbuddin Hekmayar and the Northern Alliance, a period which won Hek the title Most Evil Man in the Worldand didn't do much for the reputations of the Northern Alliance guys either.... as a potentially useful way to bleed Pakistain to either punish or incentivise it to take on Afghan faceless myrmidons based in Pakistain. That mindless game hurts everyone, Afghanistan, Pakistain and the US, leaving the TTP to morph and expand. The TTP-IS bully boy nexus in Afghanistan needs to be urgently dismantled. |
| Posted by:Fred |