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‘Taliban tap Punjab heartland for recruits’

* LA Times says Pakistanis increasingly concerned over deadly collaboration between Punjabi militants from Sargodha and Taliban
* Goals of Taliban, Punjabi militants seem to have merged
* Recruits at madrassas are teens without strong links to family

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: A US newspaper claimed on Monday that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is blatantly recruiting Punjabi militants through a North Waziristan office – the identity of which does not need to be kept secret “in a largely ungoverned area”.

“One by one, recruits from Punjab would make the seven-hour drive to Waziristan, where they would pull up to an office that made no secret of its mission. The signboard above the office door read ‘Tehreek-e-Taliban’. In a largely ungoverned city like Miranshah, there was no reason to hide its identity,” said the Los Angeles Times.

“The trainees from Sargodha would arrive, grab some sleep at the Taliban office and afterwards head into Waziristan’s rugged mountains for instruction in skills, including karate and handling explosives and automatic rifles,” said the newspaper.

“Someone recruits them, then someone else takes them to Miranshah, and then someone in Miranshah greets them and takes them in,” said Sargodha police chief Usman Anwar, whose officers this summer arrested a cell of returning Punjabi militants before they could allegedly carry out a plan to blow up a cell-phone tower in the city of 700,000. “It’s an assembly line, like Ford Motors has.” The newspaper said that the arrest of six Punjabi militants in Sargodha in two raids on August 24 illustrated a “burgeoning collaboration” between Punjabi militants and the TTP that had Pakistanis increasingly concerned, with the government and the military focussing on Taliban and Al Qaeda in South Waziristan.

Military commanders say their troops assumed control of most of South Waziristan just three weeks after launching a large-scale offensive aimed at uprooting the TTP near the Afghan border. Troops are now clashing with Taliban in Makeen, the hometown of slain TTP leader Baitullah Mahsud.

“However, evidence is growing that militants in Punjab ... could prove just as dangerous as the Taliban from the country’s northwestern region that includes South Waziristan and other parts of FATA,” said LA Times. Pakistan has been hit by a nationwide wave of terrorist strikes in recent weeks, and several of those attacks have “involved militants from Punjab either masterminding or carrying out the attacks”.

A daring October 10 attack on the army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi was engineered by a Punjabi militant who also organised the deadly ambush of the Sri Lankan cricket team in March. Years ago, the agendas of the TTP and Punjabi militant organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the Jaish-e-Muhammad moved in different directions.

While the Taliban have long focused attacks on the government in Pakistan – Punjabi groups have traditionally targeted Indian forces in the disputed Kashmir region and Shias.

“Now, however, the missions of the Taliban and Punjabi militants seem to have merged,” said the newspaper. Law-enforcement officials and analysts say the catalyst was the government’s 2007 siege of the Red Mosque in Islamabad, where extremists held scores of people hostage.

After the siege, Punjabi militant groups that had been tolerated by Pakistani authorities viewed the government as an enemy.

Experts say Pakistan has neglected to adequately brace for the threat posed by Taliban-trained Punjabi militants. The newspaper claimed cells had spread throughout Punjab, and quoted officials as saying that Punjabi militants have established their own training camps in southern Punjab.

“In Sargodha, the link to the Taliban is Muhammad Tayyab, who heads the Punjabi Taliban cell in Miranhah and had close ties with Mehsud,” said Anwar, the Sargodha police chief. After several raids, Tayyab and his militant group were keeping a lower profile in Miranshah, but they still tapped Sargodha for fresh recruits and trained them in Waziristan, said Anwar.

According to LA Times, a primary conduit for recruitment was a madrassa run by the father of four brothers who were arrested by Sargodha police in August, accused of planning an attack on the cell-phone tower.

“Likely recruits at the madrassas are teens, 14 or 15, without strong links to family,” Anwar said. “Poverty is a factor, but having no social links, no future, is the main cause.”

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