An implicit message behind Taliban’s attack on children
Sunday, 21 December 2014
Dr. Theodore Karasik /Al Arabiya
The killing of 132 children at the Army Public School in Peshawar by a faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is a dangerous development. The TTP is ripping apart Islamabad’s future generations. That fact opens doors of opportunity for other extremists to attack children of military and official elites as an operational and tactical tool.
The TTP claimed responsibility for the attack on the school children by arguing that the extremist terrorist group was seeking vengeance for military assaults last summer in North and South Waziristan and retaliation for “targeting families and females” by not only the Pakistani military but by American drone strikes. Muhammad Umar Khorasani, from the Jamatul Ahrar faction of the TTP, stated “We want them (the Pakistani military) to feel the pain.”
In addition, TTP Commander Jihad Yar Wazir stated “The TTP is ready for a long, long war against the U.S. puppet state of Pakistan. We are just displaced, but we are still in positions to attack wherever we want.” Yar Wazir justified the killings as fitting the TTP’s implementation of justice: “The parents of the army school are army soldiers and they are behind the massive killing of our kids and indiscriminate bombing in North and South Waziristan. To hurt them at their safe haven and homes—such an attack is perfect revenge.”
Khalifa Omar Mansoor, who allegedly organized the attack, argued that ordinary Pakistanis have disregarded the predicament of inhabitants in the two Waziristans. Mansoor is the chief of the TTP chapter that originates from the tribal region of Darra Adam Khel, in northwestern Pakistan. The group made headlines when it beheaded a kidnapped Polish engineer five years ago.
Pakistan has 146 Army Public Schools around the country, and many other schools administered by other arms of the military. Mansoor threatened to target similar institutions around the country. He said: “I want to tell the Pakistan government, and the directors, teachers and students of the army’s affiliated institutions, that you are the ones strengthening this un-Islamic democratic system,” he said. “It is these institutions that graduate future generals, brigadiers and majors, who then kill Taliban and innocent tribal people.” Mansoor’s point is clear: to kill off future generations of leadership.
Retribution
It is important to illustrate the changes ongoing in the TTP within the past two years. A U.S. drone strike killed TTP leader Hakimullah Meshud in 2013. Maulana Fazlullah became the group’s new leader in late 2013 after a succession struggle because Fazlullah is not from the Meshud tribe. Over the past few months of divisions within the TTP and its mother organization, the Pakistani Taliban, are becoming more apparent. As such, the Pakistani Taliban is a misnomer because the extremist group is an umbrella organization divided among tribes and other factions. Currently, the two hard-line and most effective groups within the TTP are the Mohmand Taliban, led by Umar Khalid, and the Dara group led by Khalifa Omar. The Dara group is active around the Peshawar valley region and have been involved in most of the deadly attacks there. Significantly, in late 2014, the TTP fragmented into at least four groups because of the influence of the Islamic State. The pledging of “bayat” or allegiance to ISIS’s leader Al-Baghdadi by the subgroups meant that this faction would quickly adopt more stringent and violent tactics that we may now be seeing.
“The TTP mindset is based on retribution and the targeting of children of the Pakistani military is warranted according to their ideology”
Dr. Theodore Karasik
It is clear that the TTP mindset is based on retribution and the targeting of children of the Pakistani military is warranted according to their ideology of striking at those who do not fit their shariat paradigim. But it is important to note that TTP has attacked children at schools or in school transport in the past. It was the TTP, in a previous incarnation that shot now Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai in the head.
But in this day and age the TTP faction Jamatul Ahrar is going to target more children. Clearly, in 2014, children are being killed not only in Nigeria by Boko Haram but also in areas under ISIS rule where children are sold into slavery or butchered by decapitation or other forms of death, including the slaughter of Yazidis. Although attacking schools and killing children is not new across the world—the 2004 Beslan, Russian Federation attack, the 2007 Al-Qataniyah and Al-Adnaniyah Yazidi towns attack, the 2007 Baghlani-jadid, Afghanistan attack, and the 2011 lone-wolf Anders Breivik shootings in Norway come to mind– the frequency of such attacks is rising due to the high shock value of any such strike. What makes the attack in Pakistan all the more important is indeed the targeting of future generations.
Now, it is quite possible the killing of the offspring of the Pakistani military of any state is a very specific endeavor that extremists and terrorists will capitalize upon. The Army Public School in Peshawar strike ups the ante: Is it truly open season on children of public servants and elites from West Africa to South Asia? The answer, sadly, may be yes. The time is now to plan to mitigate terrorist operations targeting children of military and state elites who will go to school after the New Year.
