Taliban Intensifies Clampdown On Tunes In Afghanistan

A middle-aged attorney, Nia Beg, is nervous immediately after a large incursion by Islamist militants rattled his homeland in northwestern Pakistan this month.

Beg is Kalash, and he follows the historical pagan religion practiced in Bumburet and other remote valleys collectively known as Kalash in the northwestern district of Chitral, which borders eastern Afghanistan.

He claims that attacks by scores of Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on various villages in Kalash pose challenging inquiries about the safety of Chitral, which experienced almost never seen Taliban violence and is just one of Pakistan’s leading tourist places for the reason that of its exclusive society and pure beauty.

“My little ones talk to me, ‘How will we now go to faculty or walk freely in our village?'” he advised RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal right after the Taliban incursion into Chitral that began on September 6.

Pakistan claimed to have repulsed the attack and forced the TTP militants to retreat into Afghanistan.

On September 6, the military explained 4 troopers and 12 militants have been killed in clashes. In a indication that all was not perfectly in Chitral, the government imposed a three-working day curfew in the mountainous location.

On September 10, the armed forces claimed it killed seven much more militants in ongoing “sanitization” functions. Gunship helicopters had been also utilised, which suggests some of the TTP militants ended up perfectly entrenched.

“Citizens of Kalash are very frightened simply because the Taliban are spiritual extremists,” Abdul Majeed Qureshi, a regional Muslim chief, informed Radio Mashaal.

“We want the Taliban assaults to end permanently,” he included.

The as soon as-peaceful Chitral area now seems to be in the crosshairs of the TTP, whose insurgency has grown remarkably right after its ideological and organizational ally, the Afghan Taliban, returned to electric power in Afghanistan two decades in the past.

Gurus say the shock incursion into Chitral showcases the TTP’s attempt to reestablish a territorial foothold in Pakistan.

After its emergence in 2007, the TTP controlled big parts in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. But by 2014, Islamabad’s armed forces functions experienced pressured it to flee into neighboring Afghanistan, which shares a extra than 2,600-kilometer border with Pakistan.

“Chitral’s advanced terrain and geographical great importance manufactured it a substantial choice for the TTP to problem the state’s territorial management,” explained Abdul Sayed, a Sweden-dependent researcher who tracks the TTP.

“The TTP’s attack on Chitral is portion of its ambition to establish a stronghold on the Pakistani facet of the border,” he extra.

Chitral, now divided into Upper and Lower Chitral districts, is made up of substantial-altitude valleys in the Hindu Kush Mountains. It borders the japanese Afghan provinces of Kunar, Nuristan, and Badakhshan. A slim strip of Afghan territory separates it from China and Tajikistan, which offers the area great strategic importance.

“The TTP wants to carve out a new protected haven that could provide its objectives,” said Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, director of news at Khorasan Diary, a web page monitoring militant teams in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mehsud argues that the TTP’s incursion into Chitral “is quite risky” due to the fact the team may possibly want to carve out other sanctuaries in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces, which type Pakistan’s western border with Afghanistan.

Just after its emergence in 2007 as an umbrella alliance of Pakistani Taliban teams, the TTP quickly prolonged its manage around massive parts of the South Waziristan, North Waziristan, Mohmand, Bajaur, and Swat districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

A long time of TTP attacks and the Pakistani Army’s counterinsurgency killed a lot more than 80,000 Pakistanis, predominantly ethnic Pashtuns. The violence also displaced extra than 6 million Pashtuns.

“The TTP is seeking to restore some of the territorial manage it at the time appreciated in regions these as Swat and Waziristan,” Mehsud mentioned.

TTP violence has risen dramatically because the Taliban seized energy in Afghanistan in August 2021. The Taliban-led federal government brokered negotiations concerning Islamabad and the TTP, but these finished in November right after the TTP formally declared that its stop-fireplace with Islamabad was over.

In accordance to the Pakistani Institute for Conflict and Stability Experiments, a think tank in Islamabad, this August was the most violent thirty day period due to the fact November 2014.

The TTP claimed some 147 attacks that month. Throughout the 1st 8 months of the 12 months, 227 Pakistanis ended up killed and 497 have been wounded in 22 suicide attacks, mainly claimed by the Pakistani Taliban.

The Pakistani military and regulation enforcement have endured mounting losses. At minimum 120 troopers and armed service officers have been killed in militant assaults in the initial 6 months of this 12 months. The law enforcement, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, have had related losses.

Growing TTP violence has sharply deteriorated relations in between longtime allies Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban.

Islamabad swiftly closed its major border crossing with Afghanistan in Torkham, which is some 400 kilometers to the south. It has also introduced a crackdown on an estimated 3 million Afghan refugees and migrants in the nation.

“We hope the Afghan interim authorities…to assure that Afghan territory is not utilised as a launching pad for terrorist attacks towards Pakistan,” claimed the Overseas Ministry in Islamabad on September 11 in response to a Taliban assertion demanding the reopening of Torkham.

The border crossing was reopened on September 15.

Sayed said the mountainous border in between Chitral and the japanese Afghan province of Nuristan contains deserted regions identified as No-Man’s Land.

“This could give the Afghan Taliban the pretext that the TTP has not attacked from parts less than their control,” he explained.

Mehsud stated the TTP attack was also encouraged by the relatively smaller existence of protection forces in Chitral. It is also the only region where by the Pakistani border fencing with Afghanistan is incomplete.

“Points are reaching a boiling stage concerning the two international locations,” Mehsud observed. “Pakistan might start surgical attacks or kinetic actions inside Afghanistan to goal the TTP leaders and their bases.”

On September 10, an improvised explosive product qualified a senior TTP commander, Badshah Khan, in the southeastern Afghan province of Paktika.

In Chitral, civilians keep on being nervous in the aftermath of the TTP attack.

“Folks are concerned that if the Taliban continues to assault, holidaymakers will prevent coming,” said Ihkamuddin, a nearby politician in Bumburet.