Suicide attacks spike, but overall attacks are down

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Pakistan suicide attacks spike, but overall attacks are down​

While suicide attacks have risen – apparently in retaliation for Army offensives – militant attacks overall have dropped sharply, suggesting that the Army’s efforts to rein in Pakistani Taliban are paying off.

By Carol Huang Staff Writer / December 15, 2009
Islamabad, Pakistan

Pakistani militants struck again on Tuesday, adding to the rise in suicide bomb attacks hitting the country’s populous heartland, Punjab Province.

But while suicide attacks have spiked – apparently in retaliation for the Army's offensives in the northwest in recent months – militant attacks overall have dropped sharply, suggesting that the Army’s efforts to rein in Pakistani Taliban are paying off, though at a cost, not least of all in civilian casualties.

According to the Brookings Institution, the number of monthly militant attacks has slid since June, dropping from more than 250 to about 170. That decline coincides with the first of the Army's two major offensives this year, in Swat Valley.

The decline has been sharpest in the North West Frontier Province, where Swat is located, dropping from about 160 to 70.

These attacks, which Brookings labels as “terrorist/insurgent attacks,” refer to “any attack against civilians or targets within the country by insurgents not participating in a battle against security forces,” explains Ian Livingston, who helped create the index. This includes unprovoked gun attacks, roadside bombings, mortar attacks on outposts, and so on. It also includes some suicide bombings.

The past several weeks have seen an even further drop in attacks, Mr. Livingston says. This decrease came as the Army launched an offensive Oct. 17 against Pakistan's main Taliban faction in their South Waziristan stronghold in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The dropoff is especially sharp in NWFP and FATA, he says.

Suicide attacks up

Whatever military success these figures may imply, civilians are certainly bearing some of the pain. The recent spree of bomb attacks in response to the Waziristan offensive has killed more than 500 people, mostly civilians.

Punjab, Pakistan’s central, largest province, is home to the capital, Islamabad, and the cultural hub of Lahore. It saw almost no suicide attacks through 2006. But it was struck 11 times in 2007, 14 in 2008, and 18 times so far in 2009, according to the Lahore Police Department.

Tuesday’s attack: dual targets

Tuesday's attack took place at what's considered a "gateway" between Punjab and NWFP, underscoring the trend that militants in Punjab are linking up with the Taliban in the northwest, helping them carry out suicide bomb attacks not just in the remote Afghan border region but in the center of the country and in major cities.

The bomb hit a marketplace, damaging several shops as well as a mosque. It also apparently targeted a senior adviser to the provincial chief minister, who has been "very vocal against militants," says Amir Rana, whose nongovernmental organization, the Pakistani Institute for Peace Studies, tracks bomb-attack trends. The adviser, Sardar Zulfiqar Ali Khan, was not at home when the bomb went off.

Pakistan suicide attacks spike, but overall attacks are down / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

============

As some of us have been arguing - the threat from the TTP is rapidly being turned from a military scale threat to a 'police level' threat.

The TTP has been decimated in Swat and South Waziristan, and the military has continued to tighten the noose by also engaging them in Kurram, Orakzai and Khyber. Crime in Peshawar has fallen.

However, this is space created by the military that needs to be filled by the civilian institutions, especially local law enforcement. In the major cities there is little the military can do, and it is up to the local police and civilian administration to beef up vigilance and put in place effective mechanisms for preempting terrorism from small cells.

The GoP really needs to step in terms of police reforms and funding to ensure that LEA's can do their job without political pressure and corruption is rooted out.

 

[Slides]

Excellent article and props to the reporter and Brookings with publishing this data.

We have to remember that suicide bombs and "fidai" attacks are the very last resorts in terms of tactics that TTP & co have. And this threat cannot be underestimated, but it's clear that the TTP neither has the skill or resources to sustain an insurgency for too long, though they can maintain a terror campaign for the time being.

 

[sonicboom]

Insurgents forced out of Pakistan's tribal havens form smaller cells in heart of nation

By Griff Witte and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 19, 2009

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- Militants forced to flee their havens in Pakistan's mountainous tribal areas are establishing new, smaller cells in the heart of the country and have begun carrying out attacks nationwide, U.S. and Pakistani officials say.

The spread of fighters is an unintended consequence of a relatively successful effort by the United States and Pakistan to disrupt the insurgents' operations, through missile strikes launched by unmanned CIA aircraft and a ground offensive carried out this fall in South Waziristan by the Pakistani army.

American and Pakistani officials say the militants' widening reach has added to the challenge for both nations' intelligence, which must now track an insurgent diaspora that can infiltrate Pakistan's teeming cities and blend seamlessly with the local population. A Pakistani intelligence official said the offensive had put militants "on the run" but added: "Now they're all over -- Afghanistan, North Waziristan and inside Pakistan."

"They have scattered their network and structure," said Muhammad Amir Rana, director of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, a security-oriented think tank. "It's easy for many of them to hide in Punjab or Karachi."

Pakistani officials insist that they are doing as much as they can to counter the extremist threat and that they are paying the price. In recent months, militants have unleashed a wave of attacks in Punjab province, the military's home base, with many of the strikes carried out by fighters who have left the Federally Administered Tribal Areas as the pressure there has mounted.

But the flow of militants out of the tribal areas has frustrated U.S. intelligence, which escalated the missile strikes using drone aircraft this year but has found targets increasingly scarce in recent months. Because of the Pakistani government's opposition, the CIA has not expanded its campaign of drone warfare beyond the lawless tribal belt in the northwest that hugs the Afghan border.

The United States has threatened to enlarge the scope of its drone campaign unless Pakistan steps up its efforts against insurgent groups that have found sanctuary in the country and that focus on attacking U.S. troops in Afghanistan. But with anti-Americanism on the rise in Pakistan, drone attacks outside the tribal belt could elicit a powerful public backlash and could jeopardize Pakistani military cooperation, officials here say.

Until this week, the pace of reported drone strikes in the tribal areas had been off sharply from summer highs. Although 2009 has set a record -- 50 drone strikes, compared with 31 last year -- the tempo declined this fall from six or seven per month to about two, according to a tally by the nonprofit group Long War Journal. In addition, until last week, there had been a three-month lull in reported deaths of senior al-Qaeda or Taliban operatives.

This week, however, has brought a surge in strikes: Suspected Predator drones killed six people Friday, and a barrage of as many as 11 missiles on Thursday killed 16. The strikes, all in North Waziristan, came just days after top U.S. military officials visited Pakistan and urged the government to broaden its offensive into that area. Pakistan declined, saying such a move would stretch its military too thin.

Pakistani officials complain that although the drone strikes help incite insurgent attacks against domestic targets, the United States generally does not go after militants who focus their firepower inside Pakistan. Instead, the officials say, the drones are trained on those Taliban and al-Qaeda commanders who are most troublesome for U.S. commanders in Afghanistan.

U.S. intelligence officials refuse to comment on drone strikes in Pakistan, or even to publicly acknowledge CIA involvement in such flights.

Still, American intelligence officials said the drop in reported incidents this fall does not indicate any slackening in the intensity of U.S. efforts to strike al-Qaeda and its allies in the tribal region.

"There's been no decision by anyone to reduce any aspect of counterterrorism operations. That certainly includes the most effective activities," said a U.S. counterterrorism official familiar with the effort.

Several counterterrorism experts and former intelligence officials acknowledged, though, that finding targets has become more difficult in recent months. They said militants have adapted their tactics, improved security and executed anyone suspected of being an informant. They also acknowledged that some jihadists from the tribal belt have moved to urban areas, apparently to escape the threat of drones.

The Pakistani intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Taliban and al-Qaeda have ruthlessly purged anyone in their organizations accused of being a spy. The markets in Peshawar, capital of the North-West Frontier Province, are full of DVD recordings of beheadings of suspected informants.

Just in North Waziristan, the official said, Pakistani intelligence agencies have lost 30 undercover operatives this year.

As a result of the killings, he said, "quite a few areas have literally become black holes for us."
Although the Pakistani government officially opposes the drone campaign, it cooperates behind the scenes, sharing intelligence with the CIA.

In addition to killing suspected spies, Taliban and al-Qaeda commanders have destroyed communication towers, stopped talking on the phone and begun to move only at night -- all in an effort to avoid detection.

"They have truly gone underground," said Ashraf Ali, director of the FATA Research Center. "Before, they were openly roaming the streets. They would hold meetings. But in the daytime now, they can't be seen."

Such tactics do not neutralize the value of the drones, but they are "understandably effective in depriving the United States of the target-rich environment that existed when we first ramped up the attacks," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert and professor at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official said militant groups have concluded over the past year that "cities are safer, particularly the big cities, where there's anonymity but also support networks, communication -- everything they need."

But the former official also acknowledged a debate within the U.S. counterterrorism community over the balance between remote-control drone strikes and other operations that are more effective at gathering intelligence. "If you're killing people," he said, "you're not developing sources or informants."

Warrick reported from Washington.

washingtonpost.com

 

[Awesome]

This was expected, the bigger OPs would have to be followed by good police work and weaken these cells one by one.

 

[Awesome]

Although this particular news article presents no evidence of this really happening and is speculative.

 

[fatman17]

Although this particular news article presents no evidence of this really happening and is speculative.

this could be possible, as there have been 'raids' in the cities of pindi and lahore have resulted in arrest of suspected militants.

the police have to be on their 'toes' which is difficult because of the prevailing 'culture'.

 

[kidwaibhai]

I think most of them are going to Karachi because if they go to parts of Punjab they are easily identifiable. If they do come to Karachi i think the Karachi Police is doing a good job in catching these people. We hear reports now and then of them catching taliban with large number of bomb making material and other weaponry. What i do fear is them going to either NWFP or Balochistan where i think they have a higher rate of survivability.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Insurgents forced out of Pakistan's tribal havens form smaller cells in heart of nation​

By Griff Witte and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 19, 2009; A01

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- Militants forced to flee their havens in Pakistan's mountainous tribal areas are establishing new, smaller cells in the heart of the country and have begun carrying out attacks nationwide, U.S. and Pakistani officials say.

The spread of fighters is an unintended consequence of a relatively successful effort by the United States and Pakistan to disrupt the insurgents' operations, through missile strikes launched by unmanned CIA aircraft and a ground offensive carried out this fall in South Waziristan by the Pakistani army.

American and Pakistani officials say the militants' widening reach has added to the challenge for both nations' intelligence, which must now track an insurgent diaspora that can infiltrate Pakistan's teeming cities and blend seamlessly with the local population. A Pakistani intelligence official said the offensive had put militants "on the run" but added: "Now they're all over -- Afghanistan, North Waziristan and inside Pakistan."

"They have scattered their network and structure," said Muhammad Amir Rana, director of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, a security-oriented think tank. "It's easy for many of them to hide in Punjab or Karachi."

Pakistani officials insist that they are doing as much as they can to counter the extremist threat and that they are paying the price. In recent months, militants have unleashed a wave of attacks in Punjab province, the military's home base, with many of the strikes carried out by fighters who have left the Federally Administered Tribal Areas as the pressure there has mounted....


.... A former senior U.S. intelligence official said militant groups have concluded over the past year that "cities are safer, particularly the big cities, where there's anonymity but also support networks, communication -- everything they need."

But the former official also acknowledged a debate within the U.S. counterterrorism community over the balance between remote-control drone strikes and other operations that are more effective at gathering intelligence. "If you're killing people," he said, "you're not developing sources or informants."

Warrick reported from Washington.

washingtonpost.com

==========

The excerpts from the WaPo article above confirm what I was postulating earlier - the organized 'TTP Militia' has been destroyed, and the terrorists have dispersed into smaller cells in population centers.

Again, the decrease in overall attacks, with a comparable increase in suicide attacks in urban centers indicates this is increasingly becoming a 'police and intelligence war', and not a military one.

No doubt the military still has a lot to do in South Waziristan, Kurram, Orakzai etc. but it is doing what needs to be done pretty effectively. The GoP and provincial governments really need to ramp up their local intel and police.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

I wanted to cross-post comments by Blain on another thread that are also relevant to the need for police and internal intelligence agency challenges and capacity building to counter this 'new' form the AQ and TTP threat has taken.

Pakistan is 3 times the size of Iraq. That means the threat has that much more population to conceal within and act. Similarly terrorism in India is even more difficult to track and hold back than in Pakistan. Its all a matter of population, potential support etc.

Pakistan is going through a very rough time but such intensity has a peak and it cannot be sustained by the terrorists. Sooner or later their support base will erode, or the population will become too hostile for them to act with freedom.

In Pakistan, the problem is that people confuse Internal Security (IS) by looking at the capability of their conventional forces. This is a wrong way to look at the situation. Army is essentially an entity that can buttress some of the IS efforts, but it on its own cannot take on the threat of militancy across the country by way of only conducting CI operations.

What is well established is that whenever Army is inducted in kinetic operations against the militants, the Army dominates and pushes the militants out. However beyond the kinetic operations, the police, paramilitary, and the law enforcement intelligence have to be brought up to par to take on and sustain pressure on the groups conducting these terrorist attacks.

This is slowly materializing as Pakistan has never had a need for such capability until now. I think we will see that it will take time to put such capability into place and in the course of this, we will see quite a few more lives lost unfortunately, however this is a steep learning curve and Pakistani law enforcement agencies are learning it the hard way. If funding is available to them then I think we will see results sooner, otherwise it will be a challenging task.

 

[Hulk]

Hope they run out of sucide bombers soon.