BLA's multiple coordinated attacks on Au 26, killing 70 people have raised three burning questions.
a) How BLA muster the fire muscle & gained planning sophistry?
b) Why educated youth, especially, women are joining insurgency?
c) Its meaning for the overall Baloch conflict? BLA grew stronger after Aslam Baloch assumed the leadership after a split from Hybyair & revived the suicide squad, Majeed Brigade. With Allah Nazar's help, he also forged the BRAS alliance & attracted new recruits as the insurgency gained momentum through highprofile attacks.

It's a bloodbath & carnage in Balochistan. Near-simultaneous, multiple coordinated attacks ve been launched on strategically located roads, railway tracks/bridges, vehicles carrying minerals, Punjabi passengers & security camps/checkposts/personnel. It's a huge security lapse.1/3 Among others, insurgents ve tried to block the highways connecting Baloch with Punjab & Sindh. Concurrently, a railway bridge was also blown off to disrupt traffic. The blockade of highways hinders reinforcement bids & buys insurgents time to hit more targets in the vicinity.2/3

ehreek-e-Jihad Pakistan (TJP), seemingly a front group of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), recently targeted an airbase in Mianwali. After the attack, the most frequently asked Q has been about TTP's potential inroads into Punjab after building a footprint in Balochistan? 1/n In 2023, TTP has claimed around 10 attacks in Punjab, including 5 last month.

The killing of the ISI officials last year in Khanewal district was TTP's most high-profile attack before the Mianwali Airbase attack.

In June 2023, TTP also divided its administrative units 2/n

Timeline of Pak's internal security situation in 2022

ISK's Peshawar Imambargah attack was the deadliest mass casualty attack: 63 killings & 196 injuries.

Three attacks that gained the media's attention

Shari Baloch's suicide attack on Karachi Uni's Confucian Centre/1 Bannu CTD stand-off that played out for almost 72 hours & the near-simultaneous suicide attack by TTP in Isb's I-10/4 sector

BLA's multiple coordinated bomb-and-gun attacks on FC's camps in Noshki & Panjgur districts in Feb, one of the attacks lasted for over 72 hrs. /2

We are intellectually lazy and dishonest.

We look for lazy answers. In doing so, we've the propensity to spot convenient scapegoats & blame all our ills on them.

As terrorism has risen in Pak, everyone has jumped on the bandwagon of revising our "Afghan policy." 1/2 How do you revise something that doesn't exist?

Even if there's a sum total of collective institutional memory & individual experiences of leaders that served as an Afghan policy, it wasn't the lack of its revision that pushed things to their current status. 2/2

A suicide bomber blew himself in a taxi when police chased him in Isb’s I-10 sector. Though there have been low-level intermittent attacks, mostly targeted assassinations of police personnel, in Isb, this will be a first major attack in the last few years. 1/2

https://twitter.com/Roohan_Ahmed/status/1606174166679400448

Too early to comment on attack’s perpetrator & motives, but this could be a reprisal of Bannu CTD operation as well as a message to take the war to main cities. A worrying trend in terms of maintaining stability & reviving the dwindling economy. It is a major security lapse. 2/2

Did BRAS shot down Pak Army's helicopter or was it a crash/accident? Amid claims & denials by both sides, truth it is hard to determine. In war, truth is always the first casualty. However, the politics of credit-claiming can offer some speculative insights. Let's look at it.1/n

https://twitter.com/KiyyaBaloch/status/1554510749451669505

In the last few years, to make tehir claims credibile, Baloch separatists share pre-recorded videos, pictures or written statements of their attacks. In these claims, they give details and justification of these attacks. In case of suicide attacks, the bombers are glorified. 2/n

In Pak, the debate to understand Shari Baloch’s pathway to radicalization has gone on a tangent. It has been reduced to a condemnation-glorification binary. A more dispassionate deconstruction is required to put into perspective what led her to go to this extreme. 1/n Some great background reporting on her profile has come out suggesting links to BSO-Azad in her student days, such as @KiyyaBaloch report for @AJEnglish. Other than that, no visible clue is available at the individual level.
aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/28…

2/n

Sp, what does today's suicide bombing by a female member of BLA's Majeed Brigade signify?
a) We need a new lens to understand, let alone resolve the Baloch conflict. It's a struggle of educated, urban middle-class. So park your old lens in archives&wake up to this new phase.1/n b) It's an act of defiance grounded in decades of ostracisation, humiliation, stigmatisation, arbitrary detentions, displacements & killings. While individual despair is weakly linked to suicide terrorism, collective despair is strongly correlated to self-sacrificing missions.2/n

How we frame Baloch conflict matters. Put the Balochs back in your analyses of Baloch dispute with an empathetic approach. If that is absent, the reductive geopolitical analyses of Baloch conflict are counterfactual & oversimplification of a protracted ethno political issue.1/n If Chinese stakes or stake of any other actor take precedence over the Baloch stakes then you’ve a major deformity in your approach to regional politics & development. This is why overanalysing geopolitical factors in isolation from ground realities & nuances is flawed. 2/n

Media commentary in Pak after the recent wave of insurgent attacks in Balochistan, it is quite obvious that we are ignoring the elephant in the room, i.e., political alienation & economic exclusion which has reached a tipping point. Put politics back in the Baloch discourse. 1/n The media's politically correct & factually flawed analysis is misinforming public opinion, particularly in Punjab. While the tactical analysis of recent insurgent wave's timing coinciding with PM's China's visit & external support is correct. 2/n

Beyond token demands for action against TTP, Pak cannot afford to pressurize & alienate the TB’s acting regime in Afg for four reasons:

a)the TB’s kinetic action would push TTP towards ISKP, the former’s arch-nemesis & ideological contender. 1/4 b) There is tremendous support & camaraderie for TTP among the TB’s rank-and-file. If the TB acted against TTP on Pak’s behest, it would trigger factional divisions within the militant movement, undermining its inner unity which it badly needs to hold onto power in Afg. 2/4

On Friday, Pakistan's National Security Policy was made public. Though PTI claims it's Pak's first-ever national security policy, two policies NISP 2014-18 & NISP 2019-23 were also devised by the PMLN govt. Indeed, it's a comprehensive document that focuses on geoeconomics. 1/n However, as with previous policies, the main challenge would be its implementation. Otherwise, if we look at different policy documents & laws, they are quite comprehensive but the lack of political will, expertise & resources to implement them have undermined their worth. 2/n

This 👇 is a glimpse of how various facets of political Islam in Pak will evolve in the context of the Taliban victory and the potential revival of the Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan. In retrospect, some Islamist outfits ve leaked their individual members to jihadist orgs. 1/n

https://twitter.com/tanzeemorg/status/1415968758531829762

Taliban's spokesman @Zabehulah_M33 in his intrvw with @TOLOnews has pitched the Islamic Emirate model as desirable by various Islamists. For instance, he referred to the discontent of the Iranian people under the Ayatollahs & described Pak as a weak state.
tolonews.com/afghanistan-17…

@Fahdhusain reveals that an SVBIED hit a bus not carrying Chinese officials as the detonator malfunctioned. Seeing this, the driver of the other bus tried to turn, plunging it into a ravine.

This, if true, will be the 3rd SVBIED attack in Pak. 1/3

dawn.com/news/1635311 Characteristically, this attack has uncanny similarities with the Serena & Johar town attacks. SVBIEDs were also used in those attacks. While TTP half claimed the Serena attack, the Johar Town blast remainss unclaimed.

The return and regular use of SVBIED is concerning. 2/3

Does terrorism work as a strategy?

Research shows the declining utility of violence, particularly of terrorism, to achieve political/ideological goals. 1/n In the context of the TB’s success in forcing the US to withdraw from Afg such arguments warrant a re-examination. It can be argued that the TB’s case is an exception, not the rule. AQ & IS failing to achieve their objectives still show terrorism is a failure as a strategy. 2/n

As the Taliban revival in Afghanistan is all but imminent, it is important to grasp the gravity of this development on various facets of political Islam in South Asia. What kind of message, inspiration or lessons various Islamist outfits will draw from the Taliban's victory? 1/4

https://twitter.com/ClaudeRakisits/status/1412562613825794050

Broadly three types of Islamist orgs are active in S. Asia: a) militant jihadists like AQ, TTP, LeJ, b) religio-pol parties like JUI & JI, and c) non-political Islamist outfits like Hizbut Tahrir, et al.

To groups like JUI & JI, TB's victory is a challenge & opportunity. 2/4

The fallout of the US exit is at full display even before the remaining troops have left Afg. The TB are making rapid territorial advances in Afg's peripheral areas focusing on north & west, instead of pressing ahead in south & east--their traditional strongholds. 1/n The Taliban anticipate significant resistance from the likes of Ata Noor Muhammad, Muhaqiq, Ahmed Massoud, Gen Rashid Dostum, et al. in these areas. They have overtaken the border crossing with Tajikistan forcing around 545 Afghan forces' personnel to flee to Tajikistan. 2/n

How the civil war in Afghanistan will impact the India-Pak proxy warfare?

A thread.

Last week an SVBIED was used in Lahore to target the JUD chief H Saeed, an HVT.

Subsequently, two low-intensity, explosive-laden drones hit an airbase in J&K. 1/n

foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/01/dro… Reportedly, the Lahore bombing's mastermind was recruited in the UAE.

Of late, Pak has demonstrated overt capabilities of neutralizing TTP & Baloch leaders in Afg & in two instances in Europe & Canada. Likewise, India has established it can hit HVTs in Pak’s major cities. 2/n

1. Will the newly reunfied Tehreek-e-Taliban PAkistan (TTP) target the Chinese projects, i.e. CPEC, nationals & interests in Pakistan? This question has bothered many. Here, I try to separate facts from fiction by offering some nuance based on circumstantial evidence.

A thread. 2.TIP/ETIM's first leader Hasan Mashoum was killed in Waziristan in 2003/04. This is how far back TTP, then Mehsud Taliban, and TIP/ETIM go. Fast forward, TTP-allied Mufti Abu Zar Al-Burmi, an ethnic Burmese raised and educated in Karachi, has been the lynchpin between TTP & TIP.

1. As the US is exiting Afghanistan and peace talks are gridlocked, the think-tank and strategic communities have gone in overdrive while discussing the future scenarios and projections. It is high time not only to moderate hyperbolic predictions but bust a few myths as well. 2. The Taliban vying for Kabul is not the Mongols coming for Baghdad in 1258 where the Nile River turned black with the ink the of destroyed literature of Dar-ul-Hikmah library and the city was red with the bloodshed of Muslims.