ISLAMABAD - The attack on Monday by a jacket wallah who rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into the residence of a senior police official spearheading a campaign against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) in the commercial capital Bloody Karachi makes it abundantly clear that the shock waves from the 9/11 terror attacks a decade ago show few signs of abating.
| The Bloody Karachi suicide kaboom was in keeping with the change in TTP tactics as the group has apparently decided to target top coppers and military officials involved in counterterrorism efforts. The change in tactic shows increasingly desperation because the TTP is now attacking soft targets, such as homes of law-enforcement officials in large cities, which are bound to be relatively unsecured, as opposed to government or military installations. |
Pakistain has suffered 305 suicide kabooms, the death of 4,847 people and injury of 10,227 others at the hands of al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked gunnies in the aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington. Bloody Karachi, Pakistain's largest city, main seaport and key financial center, which is also the capital of Sindh province, is one of the biggest sources of the Pak Taliban's funds through criminal activities like kidnappings and bank robberies.
Bloody Karachi has not seen as many TTP-sponsored suicide kabooms as other major cities, but it is home to thousands of the group's faceless myrmidons who have decamped army operations in the tribal areas. The first vehicle-borne suicide kaboom in Pakistain was carried out in Bloody Karachi on May 8, 2002, when a human bomb drove his car into the side of a bus outside the Sheraton Hotel, killing 14 people including 11 French naval technicians.
Aslam Khan, the police senior superintendent who heads the anti-extremist cell of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Bloody Karachi, survived the September 19 attack after a double-cabin vehicle packed with C4 explosives was rammed into the main gate at his residence in the heavily guarded Defence Housing Area at 7.30 am. Eight people including six coppers, a woman and a child, were killed. The proscribed TTP quickly grabbed credit for the attack, saying Aslam had been responsible for the arrest of many of its key operatives.
"We will continue targeting all such coppers who are involved in the killing of our jihadi comrades," TTP front man Ehsanullah Ehsan said when claiming responsibility for the attack.
The Bloody Karachi suicide kaboom was in keeping with the change in TTP tactics as the group has apparently decided to target top coppers and military officials involved in counterterrorism efforts. The change in tactic shows increasingly desperation because the TTP is now attacking soft targets, such as homes of law-enforcement officials in large cities, which are bound to be relatively unsecured, as opposed to government or military installations. The deaths of family members and neighbors would seem of little consequence to the attackers.
The attack came less than two weeks after another human bomb on September 7 rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into the Quetta residence of the deputy inspector general of the Balochistan
...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
Frontier Corps, killing his wife and 24 others in a high-security zone in the city.
The Frontier Corps deputy inspector was targeted bomb because he was involved in the capture of Younis al-Mauritani, a senior member of al-Qaeda's external operations council, and his two aides, Abdul Ghaffar Al-Shami and Messara al-Shami. The three al-Qaeda operatives were tossed in the calaboose in a suburb of Quetta during a joint operation between the Balochistan Frontier Corps and the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.
The bombing was the TTP's second attempt in 10 months to assassinate Aslam Khan, who has repeatedly vowed to break the back of the TTP and crush its strong network in the port city, where it works in tandem with sectarian and bad boy groups. Monday's attack, which destroyed or damaged neighboring houses and killed many innocents in the posh area of Bloody Karachi, has once again highlighted that the war against al-Qaeda-linked Taliban gunnies is no longer confined to the tribal belt of Pakistain but has reached the urban centers - be it Quetta, Beautiful Downtown Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Lahore or Bloody Karachi.
The previous attempt to assassinate Aslam Khan was also made by a human bomber, who rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into the Bloody Karachi headquarters of the CID on November 11, 2010. Aslam and other officers of the CID - Fayyaz Khan, Omar Shahid and Mazhar Mashwani - who oversee the anti-extremism cell and run counter-terrorism operations in the port city, beat feet unhurt. The attack began as an armed assault and ended with a truck bomb that killed at least 20 people and injured over 100 others. The CID building was being used to interrogate suspects belonging to TTP and other banned bad boy groups. The attack was carried out a day after Aslam had tossed in the calaboose six activists of the TTP-linked sectarian-cum jihadi group - Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ...
(LeJ).
Aslam and his team members largely succeeded in breaking the TTP network in Bloody Karachi by arresting three successive ameers of the Bloody Karachi chapter of the group in recent months - Akhtar Zaman Mehsud and his successors Bahadur Khan Momand and Maulvi Saeed Anwer. This invited the wrath of the Bloody Karachi chapter of the TTP, which has links with faceless myrmidons in the country's tribal areas and with al-Qaeda and several banned bad boy and sectarian outfits. Therefore, the TTP's claim of responsibility soon after the September 19 attack came as little surprise.
Aslam told news hounds he had been receiving threats from the al-Qaeda-linked Pak Taliban. "I was sleeping when they carried out this cowardly act and rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into my house," Aslam told the media outside his ruined residence. "But let me tell you, I will not be cowed. I will teach a lesson to generations of these bad boys. I did not know that these bully boyz were such cowards that they would attack sleeping children."
Due to the nature of his work, the enemies of Aslam in the jihadi circles of Bloody Karachi are as countless and varied as the techniques he himself has used to arrest them. They range from the TTP and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) to drug-runners and hit mans belonging to several major political parties, especially the Muttahida Qaumi Movement
...English: United National Movement, generally known as MQM, is the 3rd largest political party and the largest secular political party in Pakistain with particular strength in Sindh. From 1992 to 1999, the MQM was the target of the Pak Army's Operation Cleanup leaving thousands of urdu speaking civilians dead...
(MQM).
Well-informed circles in the security agencies said the Bloody Karachi suicide attack was an attempt to demoralize law enforcement agencies, especially the Sindh Police CID, which in recent days has identified more than two dozen myrmidon bad boy and sectarian outfits in Bloody Karachi for a possible crackdown once the hunt for politically-backed hit mans is over. Prominent alongside the TTP and LeJ among these sectarian and jihadi groups are also: Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Al Alami, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain, Sipah-e-Muhammad Pakistain, Sunni Tehrik, Daawat-e-Islami, Harkatul Mujahideen, Harkatul Mujahideen Al Alami, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Jamaatul Furqaan, Harkatul Jehadul Islami, Jundallah, Tehrik-e-Islami , Lashkar-e-Muhammadi, Lashkar-e-Islami, Mehdi Militia, Hezbullies, and Tawheed Brigade.
Security sources said some TTP-linked elements had distributed a leaflet in various outskirts of Bloody Karachi in the first week of July, carrying a "hit list" of anti-jihadi personalities, threatening that they would be killed along with family members. The pamphlet justified jihad and urged "pure Mohammedans" to rise up against elements creating problems for jihadis who were described as the defenders of Islam and Pakistain.
According to the leaflet, the definition of a criminal had been changed in recent times. "Previously, it was used for robbers and dacoits, but after 9/11 the term is being used for those who are sincere with the religion of Islam and want to wage jihad against the forces of the infidel."
Those declared "liable to be killed" in the TTP pamphlet, along with the CID's Aslam Khan, included: Capital City Police Officer Bloody Karachi Saud Mirza; CID superintendent Fayyaz Khan; Anti-Violent Crime Unit Chief Farooq Awam; Special Investigation Unit chief Raja Omar Khattab; former Director General of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Wasim Ahmed; Sunni Deobandi scholar Mufti Mohammad Naeem, Shia scholar Mirza Yousuf Baig; and Muttahida Qaumi Movement leader Haider Abbas Rizvi. Television artists and anchors and some Bloody Karachi-based journalists were also on the list.
The TTP front man, Ehsanullah Ehsan, while claiming responsibility for the Bloody Karachi suicide kaboom, stated, "Aslam Khan was on our hit list and his name will only be removed after he is killed. But let me tell you frankly, he is not the only one on our hit list. There are many other officers of the Bloody Karachi Police on our hit list who will be targeted and killed soon for having sided with the forces of the infidel". |
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