Patterns Of Violence

By Steve Hynd

This morning terrorists attacked a UN guest house in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing six. At the same time, rockets were launched at a major hotel used by Western ex-pats. The Afghan Taliban have already taken responsibility for the attacks, which they said were aimed at those aiding the Afghan run-off election. The UN's Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, has already said that the UN will stay in Afghanistan - something the UN didn't do in Iraq after a similiar high-profile attack in 2003. Even so, Spencer Ackerman worries that the Taliban might be looking to Iraq past and present for inspiration.

Also this morning, a car bomb exploded in Peshawar, Pakistan, killing at least 90. The bomb exploded in the busy Peepal Mandi market street, and even though Peshawar is the headquarters of the Pakistani military, the victims were civilian. It was just the latest of a string of attacks in Pakistan in recent weeks - but only two of those previous attacks had likewise been obviously aimed at causing civilian casualties. Neither of those previous attacks - on the Islamic University and in a bomb attack on the Khyber Bazzar - has been officially "claimed" as yet. The rest, whether aimed at the Pakistani military, police or foreign organisations (the UN, again), have all been claimed by the Pakistani Taliban or TTP. Three out of fifteen total attacks this month have been on civilians and have gone unclaimed.

Such attacks on the local civilian "sea" within which terrorists must swim are inevtiably counter-productive for the terrorists in a way that attacks focussed on security forces or foreigners aren't. They're bad both tactically and strategically for the militant group, as we've seen time and time again in insurgencies and terrorist fights across the globe. In Northern Ireland, for instance, the I.R.A. belatedly realised that civilian casualties were undermining its position and switched to a campaign of attacks on security forces. The narrative becomes simple: militants are engaged in a war against oppression but are still taking care to avoid killing innocents. It's a powerful narrative, made all the more powerful every time security forces themselves kill innocents - the euphemism of choice, "collateral damage", simply reinforcing the story that the oppressors don't care about people as people as much as the brave strugglers against oppression.

It's often at least partly BS, of course - militant groups, even ones with a real cause, are rarely led or manned by White Knights. Mostly, they are more interested in enriching themselves by protection rackets, drug running and other criminal activities than they are in fighting their Good Fight. That's been true the world over as well.

The Afghan Taliban have always managed to carry out most of their higher profile attacks in such a way as to reinforce this preferred narrative - after all, Afghanistan really is occupied by foreign forces and the Afghan government really is a puppet for those forces. No-one in Afghanistan can fail to be aware of that. In Pakistan, though, while there's always been an element of Pashtun nationalism associated with the TTP it isn't pervasive enough or consistent enough to cut the mustard when it comes to even Pashtun acceptance of terror attacks. Thus I believe we've seen a switch to targetting security forces and external NGOs as a deliberate strategy designed to bolster the TTPs narrative. If such a strategy can be enforced rigorously, then Pakistani civilians will eventually begin to wonder why only the Pakistani security forces seem to kill local civilians in numbers, and whether some accomadation might not be reached with the TTP. Attacks like the one on the Peepal Mandi market street undermine that potentially game-changing narrative though. It's no wonder that such attacks go unclaimed. If the TTP are indeed trying to follow such a strategy, their next move will be to disclaim such attacks, loudly, saying that they had no part in them and condemn such indiscriminate killings - whether in fact its true or not.

Update: Strategy confirmed. The TTP's Hakimullah Mehsud has blamed the merecenary firm Blackwater/Xe and the Pakistani military for the Peshawar bombing, saying it was a red flag exercise designed to blame the militants for atrocities. He told local news agency NNI that "Our war is against the government and the security forces and not against the people."