Attacks on TV channels

These attacks represent a dangerous development not so much for damage to lives and property but for security services

There have been a number of attacks on the offices of TV stations across northern Punjab recently, the latest being on the offices of ARY TV in Islamabad. A small explosive device was thrown from a motorbike and pamphlets were scattered saying that the attackers were linked to the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP). Images of the pamphlets allegedly dropped at the scene were quickly posted on social media and they displayed remarkably good English, which at the very least leads one to speculate who or what their target audience was.

Given that the ISKP is an amorphous entity in Pakistan and its linkage to IS Central in Raqqa equally tenuous, claiming allegiance to ISKP and thus a linkage to IS is likely to be more aspirational than operational, at least in terms of anything concrete. The attacks on media offices have been small-scale and relatively crude, lacking the overall sophistication and complexity of attacks such as those in Paris. This is an indication — an indication not dissimilar to the one seen in Jakarta — that another ‘thread’ is being added to the terrorist web. A thread composed of fellow travellers of the IS, who subscribe to its ideals and values and would, given the chance, support it here in Pakistan. Or Indonesia — or indeed any other country where radicalised young people are feeling marginalised or are outside the pale of opportunity.

These attacks represent a dangerous development, not so much for the damage to lives and property, dreadful as this is, but for the security services, which are stretched, countering the mainstream terrorist groups, and now find that they have a set of self-generating and probably interconnected cells that have the capacity to create mayhem from small resources. No long guns were used in the Jakarta attacks, neither have they been used as far as is known in attacks on media stations in Pakistan. The explosive devices were in some instances home-made, crude and low-yield. A cadre of ‘pinprick’ terrorists has emerged that are cheaply funded or self-funded, operate below the radar of security agencies and cause damage beyond the blast radius of their devices. Terrorism ever evolves.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 16^th, 2016.

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