Hiding and revitalising in the urban jungle

KARACHI: According to police, Taliban are gaining a stronger foothold in the city, reported BBC News on Saturday.

Not only are their numbers increasing, the militants are also appointing leaders within the city.

“The Taliban are clever enough to keep a low profile, but their presence is growing,” said a local police official, who has been fighting terrorism for years.

The official is in charge of Sohrab Goth, a district of four million on the edge of the city, which is allegedly a safe haven for Taliban. The police officer requested anonymity, saying, “I’m on enough hit lists already.”

Karachi has been shoved involuntarily into the international spotlight since the failed attack at Times Square, New York. The suspect, Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-born US citizen, had affiliations with Karachi. A family friend believes he was radicalised during lengthy stays in the city, the BBC report said. According to the friend, when Shahzad came to Karachi last year, he allegedly met a militant go-between.

Shahzad has been charged with terrorism offences in an indictment which alleges he received training and financial help from the Pakistani Taliban.

The Taliban are consolidating their operations in Karachi, corroborated the police official. They are creating a new tier of local leaders in areas under their control rather than rely on one overall Amir as in the past.

Pakistan’s financial capital offers the Taliban rich pickings. For the most part, this is where they make money and not where they strike.

They raise funds through extortion, bank robberies and kidnappings and send the money to training camps and bases in the tribal areas, where suicide bombers are trained and terrorism attacks planned.

The official took BBC reporters on a tour of the dust-caked streets of Sohrab Goth in his one-and-only armoured personnel carrier. It is so new that the plastic is still on the seats, the reporters commented.

“We visited an industrial area where the Taliban operate a simple but effective extortion racket by padlocking factories’ doors,” Orla Guerin of the BBC said, “Business owners had to pay the militants to remove the locks.”

According to the police, they carried out an operation against the gang involved last June. In the ensuing gun battle between the police and criminals, five militants were killed but some managed to escape.

BBC reporters on their tour felt that escaping was barely a feat in the narrow alleyways of the town. The streets are so narrow that police cannot drive in.

“We can’t patrol,” the official said, “They can commit crimes in any part of Karachi and come back here to hide. It’s very difficult to make arrests here.”

Sohrab Goth offers another great advantage to the militants. They blend in, among their own people. Many of the locals are Pakhtuns, who resemble the Afghani Taliban.

Insider’s view

The militants are eager to broaden their horizons beyond Pakistan, said a former foot soldier.

The 21-year-old, who is now laying low in Karachi, told BBC that the Taliban were looking to the West for recruits. He said the issue was discussed in Waziristan, where he was trained.

“The discussion at meetings was that we should try to meet people from Britain or the United States or other countries and we should tell them it’s their duty to recruit people,” he said. The former fighter said he was recruited at the age of 17 and fought along with the Taliban in Swat before parting company with them last year at his mother’s request.

He answered the BBC reporters’ questions without hesitation but kept the meeting brief.

Security experts say the Taliban in Karachi present a new threat for Pakistan and the West because they are forging links with other militant networks and splinter groups.

“They have started to co-operate,” said another senior police officer, also on condition of anonymity.

One study on the militants’ strength suggested the presence of as many as 17 different militant organisations and splinter groups in Karachi.

Groups are getting harder to track because they are fracturing, according to Muhammed Amir Rana of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, who monitors militant networks.

“Authorities will only know about new groups after they have committed an attack,” he said.