The revival of the Pakistani Taliban and its security implications

Militant groups go through different stages in their life cycles and mutate into new forms and shapes. In this evolutionary process, some of them grow weak, while others emerge stronger, more resilient, and more lethal. There are several push and pull factors that contribute to militant groups’ strengthening or weakening, including counterterrorism campaigns, changes in their operational environment, or fundamental shifts in their strategic goals. Stronger groups in the evolved phases of their life cycles pose long-term threats to the polities they operate in.  

The Pakistani Taliban, or the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), is one such group, which has become more lethal since its resurgence in 2020, mounting large-scale attacks across Pakistan. The TTP’s return to power in August 2021 had a rejuvenating impact on its lifecycle, providing it with an insurgency model to imitate, a triumphant militant narrative, and a sanctuary in Afghanistan. Since then, the banned group has introduced several changes in its organizational structure, strategic goals, and operational strategies to discipline its ranks to be more effective in its ideological narrative and militant activism.  

The TTP, in its reincarnated form, has become a markedly different organization politically, strategically, and operationally from what it was as a militant group at the time of its inception in 2007. Today, it is politically more astute, so much so that it even issues statements on important political developments in Pakistan through its propaganda arm, the Al-Umar media. 

In doing so, the militant group articulates its ideological positions on key events to exploit the prevailing political uncertainty, economic turmoil, and security volatility in the country. Likewise, it has become more discriminate in its use of violence by hitting hard targets and avoiding attacks on non-combatants. Similarly, it has revised its strategic approach by localizing its ideological goals and moving away from the erstwhile global militant rhetoric of Al-Qaeda. In fact, the TTP has urged Al-Qaeda’s South Asian branch, Al-Qaeda in the Indian Sub-continent, to give up its regional aspirations and join ranks with it to strengthen its ideological cause in Pakistan.  

In the last two years, the TTP has also revised its organizational structure, imitating the Afghan Taliban’s model of shadow insurgency. Though its major organizational restructuring occurred in 2022, it remains an ongoing process. The TTP has divided Pakistan into two military zones, the north and the south. Likewise, the group’s structure across Pakistan has 12 units (the so-called wilayahs or provinces) and seven shadow ministries, such as information and broadcasting, welfare, political affairs, defense, accountability, education, and finance. Four of the 12 TTP units in Punjab and Balochistan were announced in June. Meanwhile, its structure in Balochistan has two units, Makran-Qalat (Baloch dominant areas) and Zhob (Pashtun majority areas). Similarly, the group has split its organization in Punjab into the north and the south units.

The TTP’s organizational restructuring, particularly its expansion in Balochistan and Punjab, warrants critical scrutiny to decipher the group’s underlying motives. It is also important to evaluate them to determine whether such pronouncements are for propaganda consumption or genuine security threats. These developments can be deciphered in four ways. 

Abdul Basit

The TTP’s organizational restructuring, particularly its expansion in Balochistan and Punjab, warrants critical scrutiny to decipher the group’s underlying motives. It is also important to evaluate them to determine whether such pronouncements are for propaganda consumption or genuine security threats. These developments can be deciphered in four ways.  

First, notwithstanding its ideological rhetoric, the TTP is primarily an ex-FATA-based militant outfit with more than 80 percent of its manpower coming from the Mehsud tribe. For instance, three of TTP’s four chiefs, Baitullah, Hakimullah, and Nur Wali, belong to the Mehsud tribe.

Mullah Fazalullah is the only notable exception who was a Yousafzai Pashtun from Swat. To dispel the impression of being a Pashtun militant group of the ex-FATA region, the TTP is trying to diversify its recruitment pool as well as expand into Balochistan and Punjab to justify its claims of being a Pakistan-centric organization. It bears mentioning that the TTP already has a sizable footprint in Karachi.

Second, the TTP is trying to transform its activism from a tribal struggle into an urban insurgency to create a powerful impact. In a bid to take its asymmetrical warfare to Pakistan’s main cities, the group is expanding into Punjab. Research indicates that urban terrorist attacks generate more impact and media coverage as compared to attacks carried out in peripheral conflict zones. Therefore, the banned outfit is moving around its militant cells to Punjab’s urban areas to trigger a new wave of attacks.  

Third, as the Pakistani government is applying persistent diplomatic pressure on the Afghan Taliban regime to stop TTP from using Afghan soil for attacks in Pakistan, the militant group is searching for new hideouts. In doing so, it is trying to minimize its dependence on the Taliban for sanctuaries in Afghanistan. The expansion of the TTP’s organizational footprint into Punjab and Balochistan is part of its efforts to look for alternative hideouts.

Finally, it is also possible that the TTP’s expansion into Punjab and Balochistan is a genuine outcome of its growing organizational prowess and operational strength. Presently, the group’s manpower stands between 8,000 to 10,000, while it has immensely benefited from factional mergers and jailbreaks. 

In the last two years, more than 30 militant groups have pledged their oaths of allegiance to TTP chief, Nur Wali Mehsud. Furthermore, the TTP prisoners freed from Pul-e-Charkhi and Bagram prisons at the time of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan also strengthened the group, an assumption that will be tested in the coming days.

If the TTP escalates its urban attacks, then the organizational expansion is more than a propaganda stunt. On the contrary, if the conflict trajectory remains the same, then such pronouncements lack substance.  

Pakistan’s counterterrorism campaign will have to closely watch the TTP’s expansion and organizational restructuring to effectively respond to its urban militant campaign. The group is continuously moving its militant resources around to achieve the maximum impact of its resurgence. Pakistan will have to use a combination of diplomacy, the application of kinetic and non-kinetic forces, as well as a revamped border security framework for an effective counter-response.  

– The author is a senior associate fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore.

Twitter @basitresearcher.