Terror nexus

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Pakistan has flagged an existential threat that it faces from a fugitive and outlawed organisation based in Afghanistan. The United Nations Security Council has once again been informed that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the TTP, is freely operating from the West Asian state, and all efforts on the part of Islamabad to persuade the authorities in Kabul to move against them have fallen on deaf ears.

This past Tuesday, it was brought on record before the 15-member world body by Pakistan's envoy that the TTP is the largest UN-designated terrorist group operating from Afghan soil with an estimated strength of around 6,000 fighters, posing a direct threat to Pakistan's national security. The spike in terrorist activities inside Pakistan during the last two years is a case in point, and the TTP has now struck a nexus with other non-state actors including Al-Qaeda and Baloch militant groups.

Pakistan is in a catch-22 situation as it confronts terrorism from its western and eastern frontiers, and the new revulsion on the Iranian front has made the strategic equation more worrisome. The intensity could be gauged from the fact that Pakistan has confiscated a huge cache of modern weapons abandoned by the US forces while leaving Afghanistan in a state of lurch.

Unscrupulous entities have laid their hands on this armament which has led to massive bloodshed in Pakistan, especially in the restive provinces of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. This is where Kabul's cooperation is desired along with a trans-regional counter-terrorism understanding to exterminate the terror nexus. The role of the US and the UNSC is essential if this simmering threat perception has to be dealt with in a sophisticated manner so that the evolving geo-economics is saved from waywardness.

The mushrooming of terrorists, incidentally, has taken a new turn as India-backed proxies are now raising their ugly head. The killing of 11 'khwarij' at the hands of security forces yesterday during intelligence-based operations in K-P amplifies the threat module, and is in need of being tackled lethally. This evolving trepidation must come to an end.