As Karachi airport erupted in flames on Sunday night after members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) raided Jinnah International Airport, so too did any immediate hopes of peace between Pakistan’s government and the Taliban. In the chaos that ensued, the security services deserve credit for keeping the attack away from the airport’s main passenger terminal, which must surely have been the higher-value target for the militants. Although the attack claimed the lives of at least 28 people, including 10 TTP militants, the death toll could have been much worse.
We are too close to events to properly assess the motives behind the attack, but one obvious theory is that it was designed to undermine attempts by prime minister Nawaz Sharif to find a peaceful solution to the impasse with the Taliban.
Another is that it brings to the surface the tensions that have long simmered between TTP leader Mullah Fazlullah’s faction and the Mehsud branch of the same organisation. Many of the TTP’s most active militants are from the Mehsud faction and are said to be angry that Fazlullah heads the organisation. If that is correct, the attack was designed to show exactly who is running the show and reveals deep divisions among the militant ranks.
Perhaps speaking directly to that lack of unity, TTP spokesman Shahidullah Shahid told Reuters: “We carried out this attack on the Karachi airport and it is a message to the Pakistan government that we are still alive to react over the killings of innocent people in bomb attacks on their villages.”
Those words appear to stretch the truth. While military strikes, including US drone attacks, targeting Taliban insurgents in North Waziristan, have claimed the lives of women and children, the Taliban is hardly an innocent party. Its militants have long targeted civilians, including girls on their way to school and vaccination workers trying to curb the spread of deadly diseases.
As unpalatable as it may seem, the government in Islamabad must keep open the possibility of more talks with the Taliban while acting determinedly against the terrorists. Its main concern must be to find a way out of the cycle of violence and get on with addressing the manifest problems – including widespread poverty, high child mortality and crippling corruption – facing the country.