The Union of Pakistani Taliban, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which has claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s deadly attack on a university campus, is exactly what it says it is: a coalition of factions of Islamic militants that want to bring rigorous religious rule, resembling that established by their more famous namesakes in Afghanistan in the 1990s, to the unstable south Asian nation that is their home.
The peak of the TTP’s power came in 2009, two years after its formal foundation, when fighters from various factions surged out of their remote mountain strongholds along Pakistan’s western frontier to within 60 miles of Islamabad, the capital. They were driven back, but a new threat to Pakistan’s fragile stability had emerged.
Over the last six or so years, a combination of drone strikes and military offensives has weakened the movement, killing successive commanders and forcing factions out of their bases.
Yet the TTP has retained the capacity to do serious harm, and as pressure has increased since the launch of a military campaign about 18 months ago, various factions have lashed out at Pakistan’s security forces and state. One high-profile attack 13 months ago targeted an army-run school in Peshawar, the western frontier city, killing 148 people, mainly children.
That assault prompted widespread anger, grief and revulsion in Pakistan, and authorities launched a more wide-ranging effort to stamp out terrorism afterwards. This involved more military action, the detention of tens of thousands of people and the vigorous implementation of the death penalty.
Under further strain, the TTP has fractured further, with many commanders leading their fighters across the frontier into Afghanistan, or simply going to ground.
The authority of the nominal leader, Mullah Fazlullah, was already weak, and has now almost disappeared. This lack of unified decision-making explains why one TTP commander could proudly claim responsibility for the attack on the Bacha Khan University, before the principal spokesman for the movement issued a denial in which he described the killing of students in such an establishment as un-Islamic.
This lack of solidarity has some advantages however. As its component parts are almost autonomous, the TTP is resilient. If one commander is killed, trafficking racket shut down, or base destroyed, the impact on others is limited. Support networks in towns and cities exist across Pakistan, with key enablers making attacks like today’s possible.
The response of the Pakistani authorities to the threat posed by the TTP is based solely on military force and repression. Little or nothing has been done to tackle the deep roots of the problem: the economic and political marginalisation of the frontier zones; the mass of weaponry in those areas; the growth of intolerant conservative religious doctrine over decades; and the spread of a hate-filled worldview.
Western policymakers, largely because it is seen to pose a minimal international threat, rarely mention the movement.
