ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will saturate its northwestern region with thousands of security forces before next month’s general election, officials said Tuesday, as Islamabad battles rising militancy ahead of a controversial poll.
On February 8, the nation of 240 million will vote in delayed polls already marred by allegations of pre-poll rigging, with popular opposition leader Imran Khan jailed and barred from running.
Previous Pakistan election campaigns have witnessed spasms of violence, with scores of candidates and voters targeted by bombings and gun attacks.
In the first week of February some 5,000 paramilitary Frontier Constabulary (FC) forces will be deployed to the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, commander Moazzam Jah Ansari told AFP.
Last week, an independent candidate running for the provincial assembly was killed alongside two aides when his car was hit by a spray of gunfire as he campaigned in the province, police said.
A senior regional government official told AFP there was a “deteriorating security situation,” and “additional police teams will be deployed at polling stations” on voting day.
A further 1,700 FC forces will be stationed in the capital Islamabad and 400 in the southern and most populous city of Karachi, tasked with backing up police who bear the brunt of militant attacks.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, in an order issued by his office, the chief minister of southern Sindh province, Maqbool Baqar warned “there have been multiple reports of attacks on candidates” running for the months-overdue election.
Some have been “kidnapped in broad daylight,” he said, describing it as a “rising tide of crime.”
Last year saw casualties hit a six-year high with more than 1,500 civilians, security forces and militants killed, according to the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies.
The biggest militant threat to Pakistan is the domestic chapter of the Taliban movement, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
Islamabad has accused Kabul’s Taliban government of harboring TTP fighters, allowing them to strike on Pakistani soil with impunity. Kabul has consistently denied the allegations.
Last January, the TTP was linked to a mosque bombing that killed more than 80 police officers inside a headquarters in the city of Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
In December, a TTP affiliate killed 23 soldiers by ramming an explosive-laden vehicle into a military base in the same province.
