Nafees Muhammad
An recent report that went mostly un-noticed in the media was about the re-emergence of Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP). TTP has remerged as a serious threat to the politicians and security personnel in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa. The report referred to a letter from Center Police Office in Peshawar to the Regional Police Officers alerting of a potential threat from TTP to the political and administrative figures. The politicians who were on their hit list were Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao of Qaumi Watan Party (QWP) and Mian Iftikhar Hussain of Awami National Party (ANP) along with an ex-PTI MNA from Bajaur tribal district. A few months back, the former spokesperson of TTP, Ehsanullah Ehsan, had also hurled a threat to Bilawal Bhutto in a tweet message after he had successfully managed to escape from the captivity in Pakistan.
On the contrary, a study of Dr. Ali Hasnain of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) that appeared in the local press on 16 September 2020 claimed that the political violence incidents in the country are declining. It was based on database collected from the local press that covered political violence incidents and associated causalities in the country between 2002 to 2019. Sind and central and northern Punjab were found to have been the two main regions where the occurrences of political violence were the highest among all other regions of the country. However, from 2014 onward the political violence was found to be on the declining trend.
The above two reports were contradictory to each other and I also had major disagreements with Dr. Ali Hasnain reports for reasons that I would like to discuss in this report. In Pakistan, political violence has multiple dimensions and, in most of the cases, it is not a rivalry of one political party against the other; it is rather a peculiar form of violence that keeps taking different shapes and forms based on the circumstances. An act of violence that appears to have been driven by sectarian hatred can simultaneously be categorized as political violence because of the victims and the perpetrators of violence. Karachi was once a battle ground of such a multi-dimensional violence.
If we look at the data on violence, we find not only the political violence but all other forms of violence have been on a declining trend since 2014, an achievement that can be attributed to the military operations like Zarb-e-Azb and Radd-ul-Fasad that have brought such steep fall in violence (Table 001).
How can the military operations bring down political violence in the country when the targets of the operations were mainly the militant outfits? Is there any link of militancy with the political violence? These questions emerge from the similarity found in the downward trend of militancy and political violence in the country.
The Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) has been maintaining a comprehensive database on violence in the country since 2013. A review of the data from 2013 to May 2020 reveals that 3,134 activists belonging to different political and religious parties were the victims of multiple forms of violence that left 1475 of them dead and 1659 injured. Among them the victims of political rivalry were 210 only (133 dead and 77 injured). So, what about the remaining victims of violence? What was the reason for them to become target of violence and who were really behind them?
Dr. Ali Hasnain’s report is silent on these questions and it also makes no distinction between the acts of terrorism and political violence. The political and religious parties are also treated equally though the causes of violence against each of them differ significantly.
In the years of 2013, Pakistan had national elections and during these elections not only the political rivalries went wild the militant outfit, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also indulged into influencing the electoral results by announcing its resolve to target three political parties – ANP, PPP, and MQM. What motivated TTP to launch such a drive against these political parties was very surprising for analysts as they couldn’t fathom any reason other than the ideological differences the militant outfit had against these parties.
TTP remained committed to its announcement and during 2013 election campaigns the worst affected of violence were the same political parties that were on the hit list of TTP. MQM lost 209 activists, ANP lost 98, and PPP lost 34 activists during 2013. The other two mainstream political parties, PMLN and PTI had also lost 15 and 19 persons respectively but majority of those incidents were not related to the militancy. TTP claimed responsibility for the fatality of 35 activists of ANP, and 14 of MQM. Surprisingly, nobody claimed responsibility for the fatalities of PPP and PMLN activists. Most of the members of PTI who lost their lives in violence were independent candidates and they had joined PTI after winning the election. In a suicide attack, ten persons including the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Israrullah Gandapur when the minister was meeting visitors at his traditional village in Kulachi. Imran Mohmand and Fareed Khan were the other two independent candidates who had lost their lives after joining PTI.
On the other hand, the loss of religious parties was not as high as of political parties during the election year of 2013. There were 123 fatalities of religious party activists compared to 477 fatalities recorded by the political parties. Ahl-e-Sunnat-wal- Jamaat (ASWJ), Sunni Tehreek (ST), Jamiat-e-Ulma-e-Islam Fazal group (JUIF) and Jamat-e-Islami (JI) were the four religious parties who had lost 105 activists in target killings during 2013 but none of them with the exception of JUIF suffered terror attacks that left 36 activists dead. TTP claimed responsibility for this attack on JUIF but there was no prior announcement of such a target.
Although the report of Dr. Ali Hasnain claims a significant decline in political violence from 2014 onward, my findings are contrary to it. My data shows that the casualties of political and religious party activists went up to 1489 persons in 2013 and it gradually declined to 123 by 2017. In 2018, it jumped up again as the election campaign went into full swing. As many as 629 casualties were recorded during the year 2018 that came down to 66 in 2019 (Table 002).
Once again, the militants became active during the election period of 2018 and started their operations that were no different from their operations of 2013. While ANP was still on their target (lost 22 activists in attacks claimed by TTP), the other political parties that came under their attacks were Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) and Pushtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM). Both of these parties lost 149 (claimed by IS) and 3 persons respectively in terror attacks. Religious parties, on the other hand, lost only 15 activists during 2018 election period and majority of them belonged to ASWJ, JI, and JUIF. All of them were victims of target killings and no militant organization claimed responsibility for any of these killings.
The only finding of Dr. Ali Hasnain that comes close to my finding is the identification of Sindh as the province highly affected of violence against politicians. The combined fatalities of political and religious parties, during 2013 to May 2020, were 1475 with Sindh showing highest number of fatalities (800) followed by KP and FATA (299) Balochistan (276), Punjab (91), Islamabad (8), and AJK (1). Punjab, contrary to Dr. Ali Hasnain’s findings, is found to have been least affected of violence against politicians during this period (Table 003). The reason is quite obvious. The wave of terrorism that has been continuing in this country for about two decades is more entrenched in regions like KP, FATA, and Balochistan because of its historical background.
Using our database, we have also tried to find out which forms of deadly violence inflicted fatalities to the political and religious party activists. The forms of deadly selected for this search were:
- Target killings – gunned down by unknown person/s or finding of dead bodies with bullet marks
- Militant attacks – armed attack or a suicide attack
- Terrorism – Bomb, IED, and Landmine explosions
- Political rivalry – clash between the political activists of contesting parties
The table 004 below is a result of this search which shows the fatalities of the political and religious parties from the above four major terror-related crimes.
The above table also shows that political parties lost 336 activists from militant attacks and terrorism. The religious parties, on the other hand, lost only 74 activists, most of them belonged to one religious party – Jamiat-e-Ulemia-e-Islam (Fazl group). This data proves that the spike and decline in political violence incidents are more linked to the terrorism than the political rivalry. Without taking these factors into consideration, it is difficult to understand the incidents of political violence in the country.
Despite discovering the above factors, a question still remains unanswered: “On whose agenda did the militants carry out their operations against the selected political and religious parties?” This mystery remains insoluble with the exception of an undeniable fact; the indirect beneficiaries of these attacks were those political parties who came out as the winner in the election. Did these winners feel any kind of obligation towards these militants and in return offer them any favors as an acknowledgement of their indirect support? A most intriguing question that cannot be verified by any evidence.
Other than all these complications and implications, the political violence in the country is more related with the existence of militancy than the political rivalry. Now that the militants are busy in the neighboring country and the next elections are not due before 2023, any major escalation in political violence doesn’t seem to be a possibility for the next three years. Yet, sporadic incidents of terror attacks against any selected political activist may not be ruled out altogether. After all, these militants have to keep their threat alive to stay in the war theater that has been continuing for more than three decades in the country.
Mohammad Nafees is a senior research fellow at the independent think tank Center for Research and Security Studies , Islamabad
