Late Evening at the Karachi Police Office versus the TTP

There was a terrorist attack yesterday at the central Karachi Police Office (KPO) close to downtown Karachi. This was not a police station but rather a central office for senior members of the Karachi police, that was stormed at 7:10 pm by a group of terrorists from the Pakistani Taliban. They took over the building and held people who were still in the offices, hostage. This set off a three hour plus stand-off and storming off the building to take it back from the three terrorists who attacked it.

The police running across Shahrah-e-Faisal to the KPO from the Finance and Trace Centre side of the road

I was deeply shocked that the TTP would choose such an obvious hard target to assault with only gunmen (armed with bombs and grenades, but still) but thankfully they couldn't pull off a car bombing like they did a decade ago on a police HQ further in towards downtown Karachi. The KPO office is also shocking because I am incredibly familiar with that place's lay out. It is opposite Gora Qabristan (the Christian graveyard) which is a historic landmark in Karachi, well known to commuters, and the interchange the KPO is on at the intersection of Shahrah-e-Faisal (Karachi's main thoroughfare that leads directly to the airport) and Korangi road (which leads across the Malir river to the sprawling Korangi peninsula and its industrial area). There is security in all four directions around the KPO and within minutes of the firing and explosions, police and the paramilitary rangers began converging on the scene. The terrorists probably chose the location for maximum shock and because since the Pakistan Super League is happening, to implicitly threaten this large cricket event because the cricketers (Pakistani and foreign players) have to travel along Shahrah-e-Faisal.

You can see the KPO building in the beginning of this video (Sidenote - I get to use the red circle now!)

The return of the Pakistani Taliban

Writing about violence in Karachi really makes me feel cheap - like I'm competing for eyeball space with the maila creeps at ARY or some shitty nationalistic blog or Facebook group or Twitter account called Pak-Patriot-$tr0nG. I'm over a decade removed from the Pakistani blog scene but hey the TTP are back no thanks to the Afghan Taliban taking over that country and letting those bastards loose, and the online astro-turf ultra-nationalist types won't admit that Pakistani policy lead to this Pakistani disaster. That however, is my general stance. 90% of what goes wrong in Pakistan is because of the failure of Pakistani policy, and the resurgence of the Pakistani Taliban is because of the Imran Khan/Pakistan Army hybrid regime's policy of helping the Afghan Taliban foist themselves on to that country. Pakistan deserves at least a fifth or a quarter of the reason why the Afghan Taliban took over.

The previous Afghan government had jailed so many of the Pakistani Taliban who had ran to that country and the Afghan Taliban let them loose. Then the Imran Khan/Pakistan Army combine decided to resettle the TTP people down in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa/ex-FATA districts where they were from/had terrorised (!) to the effect you would expect. The bombings and shootings and assassinations that have been going on since last Novemeber, when the Pakistani Taliban called off their "ceasefire the day that Army Chief General Bajwa, the nexus of the previous Imran Khan hybrid regime retired. So we have been facing this campaign of terrorist attacks for three months, which have crescendoed every month with the Bannu army jail uprising by TTP prisoners in December, the Peshawar bombing of the police mosque that killed over a hundred people, 90% of them policemen, 20 days ago, and now this attack on a nerve centre of the Karachi police's command, which was and is intended as a spectacular demonstration of the TTP's reach and capacity. There is certainly reach and capacity, but thankfully not the rat-a-tat consistency of dozens dead, which we saw over a decade ago.

The Afghan Taliban do not have the capacity (I think) to help the Pakistani Taliban mount a successful campaign to overthrow the Pakistan government. They don't have the breadth of resources the Pakistan government (or actually Army) offered them to reciprocate in the same way that the Pakistani Taliban want them to do for them. And the Afghan Taliban want to help the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Talibanise Pakistan. The best they can do right now is offer TTP terrorists a bolthole and a place to store their weapons caches and a place to organise eye-catching terrorist attacks from, like we saw yesterday and in Peshawar. Imran Khan and his regime's supporters should always be reminded that they helped cause this. Meanwhile, the police and spies of Pakistan should hunt down the Pakistani Taliban inside this country. There is no need to roll artillery or tanks, because (I think) at this stage the Pakistani Taliban do not control territory inside Pakistan. If there is any information to the contrary, well, get in touch with me through the comments.

Yesterday's attack was disturbing, but it's not like the Pakistani state doesn't have the capacity to confront it. However due to the Pakistan Army's decision to overthrow the previous Afghan government and to try and bend democracy inside this country into a one-party hybrid regime (and Imran Khan and his people's decision to be the vehicle for with this madness) innocent people are going to continue to die in further terrorist attacks by the TTP, because they have safe boltholes in Afghanistan.

The pattern of terrorist attacks in Karachi the last few years

Since the last PML-N government in 2018, which unleashed the Pakistan Rangers and police on militants in Karachi to end the violence of the post-Musharraf era, the nature of terrorist attacks has changed in this city. Mass casualty attacks with dozens of victims are a little harder to organise due to increased police presence and the Pakistan Rangers (who are corrupt but do flood the zone) being here. Increased coordination via the Chief Minister Sindh has had since 2015, Murad Ali Shah has also helped the security situation. His relative youth and active demeanour compared to his predecessor have been to the province's and his political advantage.

What we see now are spectacular gun and bomb attacks, like the Baloch militants who attacked the Chinese consulate in November 2018, the other attack they committed in June 2020 on the Karachi Stock Exchange, the bombing in Saddar last year by Sindhi nationalists and their campaign of terror and attacks against ethnic Chinese Pakistanis who work as traditional dentists. Guns, grenades even suicide jackets - but no cars filled to the brim with explosives - are what has been used to commit terrorist attacks in Karachi over the last half decade, unlike what used to happen 8 to 15 years ago. I can't guarantee it will stay that way.

Video from inside the KPO allegedly during the firefight with the terrorists

Back at the KPO

So the Karachi Police Office was taken back within three and a half hours by a combination of Karachi police and Pakistan Rangers with two policemen, a ranger and a civilian killed. Along with these four innocents, the three terrorists were killed, so the casualties for this terrorist attack were seven dead. You can fudge the numbers and only count the non-terrorists dead, but seven dead, even including the suicidal attackers, is a serious number killed.

To their credit at least, police and rangers immediately ran from every direction at the KPO building, especially since it was located at such a ridiculously central location and surrounded the building. The terrorists didn't even last the night, but they got the attention they wanted. However this should spur the crypto-fascist neo-Islamist weirdos who run this country's government to stop giving the TTP any space. Doing that is a fool's errand and will get Pakistanis killed. Which frankly some of the people in our government don't mind, but people in and outside this country will ask questions and that'll make those reactionaries look bad.

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Didn't we have a bunch of terrorist attacks? Shahbaz Sharif needs to call parliament and stop waiting on the PTI

The first sentence of this headline was originally written on 31 July 2020 during the hybrid regime/premiership of Imran Khan. It is being rescued and repurposed for current events.

Pakistan has faced a spate of terrorist attacks since last November when the Pakistan Army chief who held up the previous hybrid regime stepped down and the Pakistani Taliban restarted their campaign against this country. After the horrible bombing in Peshawar that killed a 101 people, 90% of them policemen on 30 January, the PML-N government wanted to call an all party conference.

The PTI, the previous government, did not respond and kept attacking the current PML-N government in the face of the horrific bombing that had happened and the calls for unity against the Pakistani Taliban. Imran Khan, the PTI’s leader’s, pro-Taliban rhetoric has been well known at this time, along with his unwavering characterisation of the PML-N which runs Pakistan now as thieves. Whatever. The Taliban are murderers. Basic morality would dictate uniting against murderers. But no. The PTI would not climb off its high horse over the mere issue of a 101 charred and crushed corpses of policemen in Peshawar. So here we are. There is no direction to Pakistan’s attempt to counter the TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) campaign against it. The PTI would also not cooperate, because its actions, in welcoming the overthrow of the previous Afghan government next door, that had imprisoned the TTP members who had been captured in Afghanistan, and were now freed by the Taliban, to the crazy idea in which it resettled (!) those TTP members in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa districts they had previously terrorised, had also contributed to the problem of the TTP’s resurgence.

In the face of the PTI’s intransigience, I think it is time that the PML-N government of Shahbaz Sharif make a move that strengthens democracy, rather than privatising it among an alliance of parties, and calls a session of parliament to discuss the issue of terrorism, the TTP’s resurgence and how to counter it. It would definitely be more democratic, clear the air as everyone gets to have their say and would be more within the ambit of the constitution than an “All Parties Conference.” There's something about not having this debate in parliament that strikes me as anti-democratic. I know also that Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif is essentially a far-right man and strengthening democracy is never front and centre with his plans, but in the face of the pointlessness of engaging with those who ignore or make excuses for the Taliban like the PTI and its leader, and the resurgence of the TTP, we are left with no choice but to have parliament debate how to deal with these terrorists.

And hey – Ali Wazir’s free and he will get to have his say! I’m up for it.

Ali Wazir, MNA from South Waziristan and Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) leader, has been released from Karachi prison. PHOTO: TWITTER/@mjdawar

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