Daily Times

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has moved into Syria to help their Arab friends who had assisted them in their hour of need. This reciprocity of goodwill is ostensibly aimed at pitting the Sunni Muslims against the Shias in Syria. The removal of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, being at the heart of the conflict in Syria, now seems to be escalating into a sectarian war. The future of Syria will be marked with sectarian conflict, engulfing the entire Middle East in its conflagration. That being the case, the joining in of groups like TTP is not a small matter given the kind of atrocities they have meted out in Pakistan. According to TTP’s spokesperson, the group has established an outpost with the help of their Arab friends in Syria. The cell is made of about 12 information technology experts and its aim is to keep watch on the ongoing ‘jihad’ in Syria. The spokesman added that there are dozens of Pakistanis hopeful to join the fighting against the Syrian army. TTP’s desire to manifest an international leaning is not new. Earlier they had sent Faisal Shahzad to New York to bomb Times Square that ended in a fiasco. Recently they had killed 10 foreign mountaineers in Pakistan and have vowed to avenge violence against the Muslim Rohingya minority in Burma. In January this year TTP had also pledged to send fighters to Kashmir. Therefore in order to give a boost to their global agenda, joining hands with al Qaeda not only makes sense but could consolidate the otherwise fragmented TTP to carry out high profile international terrorist attacks. The al Nusra Front, an offshoot of al Qaeda, is giving structural support to the Pakistani terrorists in Syria.

This grand design of the terrorist organisations to join hands to help one another in close cohort is an indication of a future rife with violence and aggravating the already tense situation in the Middle East, the spillover of which could be enormous to say the least. The so-called Arab Spring, touted as the harbinger of democracy in the dictatorially-run Middle East, has taken a bloody turn, the first manifestation of which was Libya, where the US backed the infiltration and arming of al Qaeda-dominated terrorist organisations that not only ended Gaddafi’s rule in a tragic way but in due course the revolution turned its ugly visage against the US itself by killing its Ambassador in Benghazi. The fire stoked in Libya is now raging through Africa. Mali is a case in point. There is a lesson for the US-led western support to the insurgency in Syria: supporting terrorists expediently in one theatre to accomplish their goals while condemning them in others will have severe blowback at some stage, just as happened in Benghazi and Mali. The reports coming out from British intelligence should be paid heed to. According to their reports, European men joining the ranks of al Qaeda-linked Islamist organisations in Syria, when they return to their countries could create mind-blogging havoc and might tear the fabric of western civilisation apart. Saudi Arabia and Qatar should also realize that their participation in the civil war is growing into a sectarian war against the Iranian-backed Bashar al-Assad regime that could come back and haunt their own societies.

This cauldron will explode into the worst sectarian crisis of contemporary history unless some way out is managed by the forces involved in siding with the Syrian opposition militants. As far as the TTP is concerned, it is time for Pakistan to rethink its policy about the group. Having become doubly dangerous by aligning with international terrorist organisations, their strength if not curtailed and crushed could destabilise the country further. This emerging phenomenon of friends in need among the terrorist organisations cannot be taken lightly. *