Pakistani Taliban Boast of Patrolling Areas in Bannu and North Waziristan
Recent videos on social media shared by different Pakistani Taliban factions feature militants roaming around inhabited centres.
On February 21, accounts affiliated with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) started to share videos featuring its armed militants roaming around with motorcycles in Mir Ali bazaar of the city in North Waziristan tribal district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan. In the videos, TTP militants are seing breaking the obscured glasses of cars and harassing local population, forbidding the locals to use such obscured windows for cars. The next day, semi-official TTP media entities officially acknowledge the group’s action, arguing that the TTP militants were enforcing Sharia rulings on local population while respecting the locals, particularly women.
Seemingly, the TTP activities sparked the reaction of other factions of the Pakistani Taliban, who wanted to join the new trend in order to gain popularity among jihadist circles.
Significantly, major group of Hafiz Gul Bahadur (HGB) and its subgroups also produced videos of their armed men patrolling inhabited areas. On February 25, several videos appeared online shared by spokesman of a subgroup of HGB, Jabhat al-Junud al-Mahdi. The videos showed several Pakistani Taliban patrolling the streets of Sardi Khel area of Baka Khel region of Bannu district and checking the cars of the locals. Other videos showed militants parading in the streets or eating food together with local population.
It is significant to note that the Jabhat al-Junud al-Mahdi subgroup of HGB (not to be confused with another HGB subgroup, Jabhat Ansar al-Mahdu Khorasan, JAMK), headed by Amir Sufiyan, is also known as Sufiyan Karwan, which has been conducting devastating suicide atacks in Bannu district in the past.
The recent dynamics show the desider of all Pakistani Taliban factions for creating areas where they can establish proto-jihadist states where to enforce and administrate Sharia. Pakistani Taliban factions in the past frequently managed to infiltrate in such spaces to model their own version of state; however, since 2014, when many Pakistani Taliban factions were forced to retreat into Afghanistan’s territory due to Pakistan’s Zarb-e-Azb military operation, the TTP and other Pakistani Taliban groups decided to abandon the strategy of enforcing Sharia on local population, as they might lose local support or attract unwanted attention from security agencies.
However, recently, there has been a general re-orientation of many militant organisations in Pakistan, which pose a looming threat on the stability of the country.