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A war of words erupted in Pakistan this week, following reports that the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) had declared a ceasefire with the Pakistani government, as part of allegedly ongoing talks between the two sides.
TTP spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan denied any ceasefire Wednesday, but the prospect of negotiations require that we examine the TTP's current orientation, and how the group's outlook on its fight against Pakistan and the West has changed.
On November 8, a written message from Hakimullah Mehsud, the TTP's amir, was released on jihadi Internet forums on the occasion of Eid al-Adha, the Islamic holiday that ends the annual Hajj pilgrimage season. The message was released simultaneously in Urdu, Pashtu, Arabic, and English on Internet forums used by transnational Sunni jihadis and their supporters. It was distributed by the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), a shadowy network of translators and media operatives who produce numerous translations of key jihadi texts, videos, and songs, as well as original material. Earlier this year new videos and written statements from the TTP were being distributed by a branch of the GIMF, Al-Qadisiyyah Media Foundation, which is devoted to translating jihadi texts, primarily from Arabic, into languages of the Indian Subcontinent including Urdu, Bangla, Pashtu, Hindi, and Persian.
The shift to GIMF distribution earlier this year suggests that the TTP continues to draw upon the transnational Sunni jihadi rhetoric deployed by groups like al-Qaeda Central (AQC) and its regional affiliates while continuing to maintain a strong focus on waging a domestic insurgency in Pakistan. The result is a type of "glocal" militancy that combines both elements of transnational jihadism with the TTP's more country- and region-specific goals.
In his message, the TTP amir addresses four main groups: the worldwide Muslim community (Ummah), the Pashtuns living in Pakistan's Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the Pakistani people generally, and the Pakistani military and security agencies. Mehsud also reaffirms the TTP's allegiance to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, and delivers an overview of his movement's widespread targeting of Pakistani military, security, and other government agencies as well as targets connected to the United States. Mehsud further claims that the TTP has regained control of many Pashtun tribal areas and have launched an "open war" in others, including Dir, Swat, and Buner, after the movement made a "strategic" withdrawal earlier in order to draw the Pakistani state into a costly guerilla war.
Mehsud makesmultiple references to the fall of the Caliphate, the transnational Islamic state last represented, mostly symbolically by its end, by the Ottoman Empire before its dissolution in 1924, as well as its possible reformation. He urges Muslims worldwide to support their oppressed brethren in Pakistan, describing the Ummah as "one body" in which "it is not possible for one part of it to be in pain and for others to remain insensitive to it." Specifically, he says that they should fight against the "agents of the unbelievers" who have sold their hereafter for worldly power and wealth. Differences among Muslims, Mehsud argues, should be put aside in the interest of uniting for the greater good, which to him is supporting the "commander of the faithful," Mullah Muhammad Omar, and working towards the building of a new caliphate, "a dream that awaits fulfillment."
In contrast to this strident but fairly standard global jihadi rhetoric, Mullah Omar's annual Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr messages have adopted a much more nationalist rhetoric that emphasizes the Afghanistan-specific goals of the Quetta Shura and its Afghan allies, such as the Haqqani Network and other Taliban groups inside the country that declare allegiance, sometimes nominally, to him. Omar, unlike his Pakistani Taliban counterpart, continues to emphasize nation-specific goals, albeit ones tinged with a reactionary form of militant Sunni Islamism. Omar signs his Eid message as "the servant of Islam," suggesting that he wishes to be seen as more than simply the leader of a militant movement. This description has been used to describe Muslims, including the famous English translator of the Qur'an Marmaduke Picthall, who have attempted to contribute to spreading the message of Islam. Mullah Omar has used this signature for a number of years. Mehsud, in contrast, signs his message as "the servant of the mujahideen," noting his primary identity as the leader of a militant umbrella movement that has brought together numerous local Pakistani Taliban militias under the banner of the TTP.
Mehsud takes care toward the end of his message to claim that the TTP "are under the strict guidance of the [religious] scholars of the movement, who ensure that all work is done in line with Islam and the Sharia (law) of the Prophet Muhammad." The TTP, together with its ally AQC, have taken great pains since the autumn of 2009 to distance themselves from wanton attacks throughout Pakistan that have killed hundreds of civilians, instead blaming the West or companies such as the security firm Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater. Mullah Omar made similar claims in his 2010 Eid al-Adha message and he dedicated a significant part of this year's Eid message, released on November 5, to urging local Afghan Taliban commanders to avoid killing civilians in their military operations, something which the movement continues to regularly do. Mehsud makes no specific mention of civilian casualties in TTP attacks.
Unlike Mehsud, Mullah Omar and other Afghan Taliban leaders have continually sought to attract support from employees of the Afghan government, particularly the police and military, urging them to abandon the "apostate" client government of Hamid Karzai. The TTP amir, in contrast, promises those working for the Pakistani government and particularly its security agencies that they will continue to be targets for the "mujahideen." He accuses them of being responsible for "the bloodshed of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and for handing over Arab, Uzbek, and other mujahideen to the Unbelievers [U.S. and NATO]," hinting at the TTP's close working relationships with AQC and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Addressing the Pakistani public generally, Mehsud urges them to support the TTP, which he says is steadily approaching victory against the country's government, whose rulers are, in Mehsud's words, continually finding the territory in which they are safe shrink.
Mehsud then addresses Pakistani Pashtuns at length, recognizing their suffering, which he disingenuously blames solely on military operations of the state and American ally. He makes strategic reference to the disregard for damage to civilian areas, torture and abuse, and extrajudicial executions carried out by the Pakistani military against Pashtuns in regions such as the Swat Valley and South Waziristan, as well as recent political violence in Karachi that has killed scores of Pashtuns and other Pakistanis in severe fighting between the secular Pashtun Awami Nationalist Party and the Muttahida Qaumi Movementt (MQM). Mehsud's appeal to Pashtun solidarity contrasts, somewhat, with his global jihadi rhetoric like that of AQC, whose leaders are opposed to nationalism and identification outside of Islam.
Purported footage of these human rights abuses have become staples in videos produced by the TTP, AQC, and the IMU. Mehsud tells Pakistani Pashtuns that his movement is "trying to the best of our abilities" to ensure that "you may all return safely to your homes and live with honor." His outreach to the TTP's prospective base in Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa and the country's tribal areas continues efforts by other senior TTP leaders, such as deputy amir Wali-ur Rehman Mehsud, who penned a letter to tribal leaders, released on April 19, warning them not to sell their hereafter for worldly promises by the Pakistani state. This was followed with a video message from Rehman to tribal leaders released on April 30, and a second video released on June 1, reminding the Pashtun tribes of their proud history of resisting invaders, hinting that the tribes should now resist the new invaders, the apostate Pakistani state and its "Crusader" ally, the United States. Both videos were produced by Al-Qadisiyyah and distributed online by the GIMF.
The media materials produced by the TTP and the Afghan Taliban provide windows into their larger driving ideologies. Although they share some significant similarities, such as subscription to militant forms of Sunni Islamism, the two movements also diverge on a number of important issues. Broadly explained, the TTP has drawn on AQC's transnational militancy in developing its own ‘glocal' jihadi ideology, focusing on insurgency in Pakistan but openly threatening to expand outside the country's borders in response to U.S. drone strikes inside the country, while the Afghan Taliban has embraced, at least in public, more nation-specific goals that are largely parochial to Afghanistan.
The Afghan Taliban and TTP have diverged in their media messaging as their political goals shift and, in some ways, grow further apart. Strategically, the Afghan Taliban, or at least its "old guard," is seemingly seeking a place for itself within the broader Afghan political context, and has gone to great lengths to assure its neighbors that it does not have expansionist goals. In contrast, the TTP has expanded its rhetoric and, in a few cases, its operational reach beyond Pakistan's borders, adopting parts of AQC's global jihadi rhetoric, though it remains focused mainly on waging a war against the Pakistani state and has utilized this rhetoric in aid of this insurgency.
Christopher Anzalone is a doctoral student in the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University where he studies modern Muslim socio-political movements, Shi'ite Islam, and Islamist visual culture. He blogs at Views from the Occident and Al-Wasat.
The author would like to thank his colleague Muhammad Ahmad Munir, an Urdu and Arabic instructor and graduate student in the Institute, for analyzing and discussing with him several key Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan primary sources used in preparing this article.
http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts...rid_insurgency
TTP spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan denied any ceasefire Wednesday, but the prospect of negotiations require that we examine the TTP's current orientation, and how the group's outlook on its fight against Pakistan and the West has changed.
On November 8, a written message from Hakimullah Mehsud, the TTP's amir, was released on jihadi Internet forums on the occasion of Eid al-Adha, the Islamic holiday that ends the annual Hajj pilgrimage season. The message was released simultaneously in Urdu, Pashtu, Arabic, and English on Internet forums used by transnational Sunni jihadis and their supporters. It was distributed by the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), a shadowy network of translators and media operatives who produce numerous translations of key jihadi texts, videos, and songs, as well as original material. Earlier this year new videos and written statements from the TTP were being distributed by a branch of the GIMF, Al-Qadisiyyah Media Foundation, which is devoted to translating jihadi texts, primarily from Arabic, into languages of the Indian Subcontinent including Urdu, Bangla, Pashtu, Hindi, and Persian.
The shift to GIMF distribution earlier this year suggests that the TTP continues to draw upon the transnational Sunni jihadi rhetoric deployed by groups like al-Qaeda Central (AQC) and its regional affiliates while continuing to maintain a strong focus on waging a domestic insurgency in Pakistan. The result is a type of "glocal" militancy that combines both elements of transnational jihadism with the TTP's more country- and region-specific goals.
In his message, the TTP amir addresses four main groups: the worldwide Muslim community (Ummah), the Pashtuns living in Pakistan's Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the Pakistani people generally, and the Pakistani military and security agencies. Mehsud also reaffirms the TTP's allegiance to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, and delivers an overview of his movement's widespread targeting of Pakistani military, security, and other government agencies as well as targets connected to the United States. Mehsud further claims that the TTP has regained control of many Pashtun tribal areas and have launched an "open war" in others, including Dir, Swat, and Buner, after the movement made a "strategic" withdrawal earlier in order to draw the Pakistani state into a costly guerilla war.
Mehsud makesmultiple references to the fall of the Caliphate, the transnational Islamic state last represented, mostly symbolically by its end, by the Ottoman Empire before its dissolution in 1924, as well as its possible reformation. He urges Muslims worldwide to support their oppressed brethren in Pakistan, describing the Ummah as "one body" in which "it is not possible for one part of it to be in pain and for others to remain insensitive to it." Specifically, he says that they should fight against the "agents of the unbelievers" who have sold their hereafter for worldly power and wealth. Differences among Muslims, Mehsud argues, should be put aside in the interest of uniting for the greater good, which to him is supporting the "commander of the faithful," Mullah Muhammad Omar, and working towards the building of a new caliphate, "a dream that awaits fulfillment."
In contrast to this strident but fairly standard global jihadi rhetoric, Mullah Omar's annual Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr messages have adopted a much more nationalist rhetoric that emphasizes the Afghanistan-specific goals of the Quetta Shura and its Afghan allies, such as the Haqqani Network and other Taliban groups inside the country that declare allegiance, sometimes nominally, to him. Omar, unlike his Pakistani Taliban counterpart, continues to emphasize nation-specific goals, albeit ones tinged with a reactionary form of militant Sunni Islamism. Omar signs his Eid message as "the servant of Islam," suggesting that he wishes to be seen as more than simply the leader of a militant movement. This description has been used to describe Muslims, including the famous English translator of the Qur'an Marmaduke Picthall, who have attempted to contribute to spreading the message of Islam. Mullah Omar has used this signature for a number of years. Mehsud, in contrast, signs his message as "the servant of the mujahideen," noting his primary identity as the leader of a militant umbrella movement that has brought together numerous local Pakistani Taliban militias under the banner of the TTP.
Mehsud takes care toward the end of his message to claim that the TTP "are under the strict guidance of the [religious] scholars of the movement, who ensure that all work is done in line with Islam and the Sharia (law) of the Prophet Muhammad." The TTP, together with its ally AQC, have taken great pains since the autumn of 2009 to distance themselves from wanton attacks throughout Pakistan that have killed hundreds of civilians, instead blaming the West or companies such as the security firm Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater. Mullah Omar made similar claims in his 2010 Eid al-Adha message and he dedicated a significant part of this year's Eid message, released on November 5, to urging local Afghan Taliban commanders to avoid killing civilians in their military operations, something which the movement continues to regularly do. Mehsud makes no specific mention of civilian casualties in TTP attacks.
Unlike Mehsud, Mullah Omar and other Afghan Taliban leaders have continually sought to attract support from employees of the Afghan government, particularly the police and military, urging them to abandon the "apostate" client government of Hamid Karzai. The TTP amir, in contrast, promises those working for the Pakistani government and particularly its security agencies that they will continue to be targets for the "mujahideen." He accuses them of being responsible for "the bloodshed of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and for handing over Arab, Uzbek, and other mujahideen to the Unbelievers [U.S. and NATO]," hinting at the TTP's close working relationships with AQC and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Addressing the Pakistani public generally, Mehsud urges them to support the TTP, which he says is steadily approaching victory against the country's government, whose rulers are, in Mehsud's words, continually finding the territory in which they are safe shrink.
Mehsud then addresses Pakistani Pashtuns at length, recognizing their suffering, which he disingenuously blames solely on military operations of the state and American ally. He makes strategic reference to the disregard for damage to civilian areas, torture and abuse, and extrajudicial executions carried out by the Pakistani military against Pashtuns in regions such as the Swat Valley and South Waziristan, as well as recent political violence in Karachi that has killed scores of Pashtuns and other Pakistanis in severe fighting between the secular Pashtun Awami Nationalist Party and the Muttahida Qaumi Movementt (MQM). Mehsud's appeal to Pashtun solidarity contrasts, somewhat, with his global jihadi rhetoric like that of AQC, whose leaders are opposed to nationalism and identification outside of Islam.
Purported footage of these human rights abuses have become staples in videos produced by the TTP, AQC, and the IMU. Mehsud tells Pakistani Pashtuns that his movement is "trying to the best of our abilities" to ensure that "you may all return safely to your homes and live with honor." His outreach to the TTP's prospective base in Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa and the country's tribal areas continues efforts by other senior TTP leaders, such as deputy amir Wali-ur Rehman Mehsud, who penned a letter to tribal leaders, released on April 19, warning them not to sell their hereafter for worldly promises by the Pakistani state. This was followed with a video message from Rehman to tribal leaders released on April 30, and a second video released on June 1, reminding the Pashtun tribes of their proud history of resisting invaders, hinting that the tribes should now resist the new invaders, the apostate Pakistani state and its "Crusader" ally, the United States. Both videos were produced by Al-Qadisiyyah and distributed online by the GIMF.
The media materials produced by the TTP and the Afghan Taliban provide windows into their larger driving ideologies. Although they share some significant similarities, such as subscription to militant forms of Sunni Islamism, the two movements also diverge on a number of important issues. Broadly explained, the TTP has drawn on AQC's transnational militancy in developing its own ‘glocal' jihadi ideology, focusing on insurgency in Pakistan but openly threatening to expand outside the country's borders in response to U.S. drone strikes inside the country, while the Afghan Taliban has embraced, at least in public, more nation-specific goals that are largely parochial to Afghanistan.
The Afghan Taliban and TTP have diverged in their media messaging as their political goals shift and, in some ways, grow further apart. Strategically, the Afghan Taliban, or at least its "old guard," is seemingly seeking a place for itself within the broader Afghan political context, and has gone to great lengths to assure its neighbors that it does not have expansionist goals. In contrast, the TTP has expanded its rhetoric and, in a few cases, its operational reach beyond Pakistan's borders, adopting parts of AQC's global jihadi rhetoric, though it remains focused mainly on waging a war against the Pakistani state and has utilized this rhetoric in aid of this insurgency.
Christopher Anzalone is a doctoral student in the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University where he studies modern Muslim socio-political movements, Shi'ite Islam, and Islamist visual culture. He blogs at Views from the Occident and Al-Wasat.
The author would like to thank his colleague Muhammad Ahmad Munir, an Urdu and Arabic instructor and graduate student in the Institute, for analyzing and discussing with him several key Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan primary sources used in preparing this article.
http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts...rid_insurgency
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