Karachi: Enter TTP

The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) may have been born in the tribal agencies, it might have even ruled Swat, but it is Karachi that has been crucial to the TTP's perpetuation of power across the country. It is Karachi that helped fund the TTP's war in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as the organisation routinely conducted bank heists to generate finances. It is also Karachi where members of the TTP found sanctuary as security forces pounded their hideouts. Slowly but surely, the largest city of Pakhtun people has witnessed three factions of the TTP taking control of a number of areas and exert their influence in many others. This is a process that has spanned more than half a decade; it promises to decisively shape the future of the city. Back in 2007, as the Pakistan government began an operation to regain control of the Swat valley, thousands left their homes to escape being caught in the crossfire. The choice of Karachi was a natural one for these victims of war; with some four million Pakhtuns living in this megacity, many of the internally displaced people (IDPs) had kin they could count on, and with whom they could shelter until they returned home. In 2009, guised as IDPs, militants from Swat, South Waziristan, Mohmand Agency, Bajaur, Dir, and elsewhere began taking refuge in Karachi, as the military operations reached their respective areas. At first, they did their best to blend in: a number of militants who fled to Karachi shaved their breads, cut their trademark long hair, and worked in the city as petty labourers. Thus disguised, they waited for the right time to establish and reinforce their networks in the city. Prior to such large-scale migrations, small cells of various TTP groups existed in the city; their job was primarily to raise funds for the operations of their parent groups, largely through bank robberies. “In the beginning, the TTP did not get involved in subversive activities. This was in line with the TTP policy of using Karachi only for fund-raising, rest and recuperation,” said a Mehsud tribal elder living in Ittehad Town. “But then they seem to have changed their strategy for Karachi. Political leaders from Swat say that Swati militants who fled to Karachi had been assassinating pro-government Swat residents in the city, all under the cover of then ongoing ethno-political targeted killings.” In short, the TTP took advantage of the chaos of Karachi to, quite literally, get away with murder. The perfect distraction: ‘target killings’ When the TTP entered Karachi proper, it found a city in the midst of politico-ethnic conflict. At the time, it was convenient for both the police and political parties to sweep any so-called ‘target killings’ under the larger rug of ethnically-fuelled violence and political turf wars. Assassinations carried out by the Taliban also came under this catch-all phrase. In fact, it was largely thanks to the peculiar political dynamics of Karachi that the Taliban presence remained mostly unnoticed and unremarked. When the MQM, in 2010 and 2011, began to warn that the Taliban militants were acquiring a presence in the city, the ANP accused it of trying to use that claim as a pretext to ‘ethnically cleanse’ Karachi’s Pakhtuns. “MQM chief Altaf Hussain had pointed out the presence of the TTP in Karachi years ago, but the authorities, despite taking the issue seriously, denied the reports regarding the presence of the TTP in the city," said Khawaja Izhar-ul-Hasan, a MQM leader. Privately, members of other political parties and analysts say that the MQM’s claims may have been proved true later on, but they were definitely written off as politically-motivated when first raised. There was no trust between the ANP and MQM, and the Taliban effectively took advantage of this gap, eventually becoming a direct threat to both parties. Background interviews with Pakhtun elders, analysts and police officials familiar with the network of the TTP in Karachi suggest that most of the Pakhtun-populated areas of the city are now under partial or complete influence of the TTP. A direct result of this dominance is the deterioration of the law and order situation in these areas. Here, the various factions of the TTP have joined hands with banned sectarian outfits and criminal syndicates in the city to increase both their subversive activities and fund-raising campaigns (mostly through extortion, robberies and kidnapping for ransom). These areas have become extremely dangerous not just for law enforcement agencies, but also for political activists of mainstream parties, especially the ANP, polio vaccinators and non-governmental organisations. The battle for Pakhtun representation: ANP pummelled The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has traditionally tolerated no opposition, political or otherwise, when establishing a stranglehold over local populations. In keeping with their modus operandi, the TTP first went after local Pakhtun leadership in Karachi — which in this case was also the Awami National Party (ANP). “Killing influential Pakhtun elders is a key strategy of Taliban groups, first successfully carried out in Afghanistan, then FATA and KP, and now in Karachi,” said Kahar Zalmay, an Islamabad-based security analyst who monitors the network of TTP across the country, saying that through an organised campaign of killing influential Pakhtun political leaders and elders in Karachi and forcing the ANP to vacate most of its traditional strongholds, now all Pakhtun-majority areas of the city are under varying degrees of TTP influence. In fact, the first open acknowledgment by the TTP of its presence in this city came as a threat to the ANP. In June 2012, it openly threatened ANP activists to quit the party, remove their party’s flags and graffiti and close their offices.