MOSCOW, December 16 (Sputnik), Daria Chernyshova — The Pakistani Taliban attacks are a backlash against the involvement of the Pakistani government and army in the US operations in the Middle East, experts told Sputnik News Agency Tuesday.
The comments come after a deadly attack carried out on Tuesday by Taliban militants on an army school in the Pakistani city of Peshawar killed more than 130 people, most of them children.
“The TTP’s [Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan] campaign against the Pakistani state is just that—a campaign against the Pakistani state. Certainly, one reason the TTP targets the Pakistani state is that it has a relationship with the US, but this is not the major reason,” Michael Kugelman, a senior program associate for South and Southeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said.
“They [Taliban] feel that the Pakistan government and army have supported the US war on terror attacks,” Afzal Ashraf, Consultant Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), agreed, adding that the Taliban is reacting largely to Pakistani policy which is tuned by the United States.
Kugelman underlined that the TTP wants to overthrow the Pakistani state and transform the country into a hard-line Islamist regime, just as Afghanistan was in the 1990s. He also noted that Tuesday’s attack could mark the beginning of a new phase for the Pakistani Taliban – “one in which it launches a long-delayed campaign of retaliatory strikes.”
“The timing could not be worse, given that Afghan Taliban violence in Afghanistan is on the rise, and given that foreign troops are on their way out of Afghanistan. The US has wanted to achieve some semblance of stability in Afghanistan and by extension Pakistan. Recent news suggests such an achievement will be very unlikely,” Kugelman told Sputnik.
Afzal Ashraf concurred and noted that the US drone attack in North Waziristan, northwest Pakistan on Sunday, which allegedly killed four Taliban militants, was the main reason behind the atrocity, as it has been successful in killing al-Qaeda and certain Taliban groups.
“Ideology drives Taliban to do some of the things that they are doing,” Ashraf said.
Michel Kugelman noted that the Pakistani military is now likely to intensify its operations in North Waziristan.
