Even as the death toll in Monday's deadly attack on a mosque in Peshawar rose to 100 on Tuesday, the attack, according to Dawn, was "a tragic illustration of the failed policy of suing for peace with the terrorist group."
The responsibility for the deadly attack was claimed by a low-level commander from one faction of the Pakistan Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), apparently as ‘revenge’ for the killing of a militant Omar Khalid Khorasani in Afghanistan last August.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, commonly known as KP, has been facing the brunt of terrorist onslaught ever since the TTP renounced its truce with the state late last year. Sadly, the needed response from the political leadership, treasury, and opposition included, as well as the security establishment to the TTP threat, has been lacking, an editorial in the Dawn noted.
The seemingly uncontrollable resurgence of the TTP in Pakistan had been forewarned by many observers since the return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan in August 2020, after they seized control from the US-backed government and imposed brutal Islamic rule on the country. The triumph of the Taliban in Afghanistan was celebrated in Islamabad including by the then prime minister, Imran Khan, who said the country had broken from “the shackles of slavery," The Guardian recalled.
The British daily quoting Michael Kugelman, a senior associate for south Asia at the Wilson Center, said: “TTP’s intensifying attacks on Pakistani security forces are meant to send a simple but unsettling message: the state can’t stop them.”
“Pakistan’s mistake was to think that the Taliban would be willing to help it curb TTP,” said Kugelman. “The Taliban’s track record has been consistent: the group doesn’t turn on its militant allies. It didn’t turn on al-Qaida, so why would it turn on TTP, with which the Taliban have been aligned ideologically for years?” he questioned.