Militants’ infighting: Rivals launch attack against TTP

Around 400 Lashkar-e-Taiba, Ansar-ul-Islam and local fighters storm Taliban stronghold near Afghan border.

ISLAMABAD:

After weeks of mounting tension, several heavily armed rival groups on Wednesday launched major attacks against Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Mohmand tribal region along Afghan border to expel the group’s supporters from the area, a Taliban commander said.

The TTP spokesman Omar Mukarram Khurasani told The Express Tribune that hundreds of Taliban fighters were resisting the opponents in the rugged mountain.

Speaking via phone from Mohmand agency, Khurasni said nearly 400 armed members of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Ansar-ul-Islam and local anti-Taliban Lashkar launched an offensive early Wednesday at the strategic and historic Jarobi Darra, bordering Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province.

He said rival groups also launched attacks on the TTP supporters at two locations on the Afghan side of the border near Mohmand agency. The areas include Shunkrey and Maya, where hundreds of TTP members had been living, dozens with families, after fleeing from military operations in Mohmand agency.

“We have killed three attackers and seized their rockets and Kalashnikovs,” Khurasani claimed.

He said the TTP did not want fighting and had also called for mediation to avoid the clash. “However, the rivals were bent upon attacking the TTP supporters in the region.”



When asked as to why TTP’s rivals launched the offensive, Khurasani alleged that they were doing that at the behest of Pakistani security agencies. “Our rivals want to control the areas,” he added.

“Our people are putting up stiff resistance,” the TTP spokesman said, adding that both sides were using heavy weapons including mortars.

An Afghan journalist in Kunar told The Express Tribune with reference to certain Afghan officials that dozens of mortar shells had landed on the Afghan side of the border, forcing several families to flee.

They said the fighting was going on in “the no-man’s land” between the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It has been learnt that the TTP fighters from other areas are rushing to the battlefield to strengthen their positions.

Some experts familiar with the region said it was a safe haven for the TTP militants who fled to that place after military operations.

One expert said the TTP was under mounting pressure after losing control of their strongholds at Maidan in Tirah Valley of Khyber Agency this month.

TTP spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan had earlier accused Lashkar-e-Taiba and Ansar-ul-Islam of hatching a plot to attack its bases and supporters in Mohmand Agency with the aid of the local ‘Lashkar’ called Mohmand Force.

“We will fight back and there will be bloodshed,” he had stated in an interview on June 8.

The LeT had rejected the TTP’s claim, arguing that its activities were only limited to the Indian-held Kashmir.

“We neither work in Afghanistan nor in Pakistan’s tribal regions. We do not have any links with any group in the tribal regions,” LeT spokesman Abdullah Ghaznavi had told The Express Tribune via phone.

There had been concerns earlier that a commander of the Afghan Taliban, Abdul Rahim, who had lost his son in fighting with the TTP supporters in Kunar province, had also announced to support the anti-TTP operations. However Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid had denied such reports, saying that Afghan Taliban would not allow its people to carry out any operations outside Afghanistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 27^th, 2013.