A commando led me through the Pakistan school auditorium Saturday where terrorists had interrupted students’ lessons with an indiscriminate barrage of bullets four days earlier. The floor had been scrubbed clean of students’ blood, but craters still marked the walls like augmented bee holes in a plank. The officer, still visibly shaken, stared somberly at the spots where he had seen the splattered brains of children during the military’s counter attack. Seven Taliban gunmen slaughtered 148 people — 132 of them children — before they were stopped. Across the sprawling 21-acre campus, the victims’ youthful faces smiled from photos placed on memorial wreaths. Amidst the tributes to the children were handwritten messages promising retribution against Tehrik-e-Taliban, the group behind the massacre: “We will hang them,” “We will crush TTP,” “We will never forget you and make them pay.” Two days after the school attack, Pakistan ended its six-year unofficial ban on the death penalty in terror cases. Six terrorists convicted on previous terrorism charges have been hanged, and it appears the government is planning to execute hundreds more. Pakistanis, enraged by the child massacre, have widely supported the hangings, but the international community has been critical of the sudden move. Amnesty International called Pakistan’s lifting of the death-penalty moratorium a “knee-jerk reaction that does not get at the heart of the problem.” Human Rights Watch said, “Pakistan’s government has chosen to indulge in vengeful blood-lust.” Pakistan has been victimized by the pain and horror of terrorism innumerable times. Churches, mosques, markets, airports – nothing has been spared. This time, the terrorists hit hard where it hurts most: Our children. Militancy in Pakistan has reached its climax. The normal rules of the world do not apply. Since the moratorium was put in place, terrorist attacks on civilians in Pakistan have only increased. In 2012, a Taliban gunman shot activist...

The rise of Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS), and its proclamation of Islamic Caliphate on Iraq and Syrian territories controlled by ISIS, has surprised even the jihadi organizations operating in different parts of the world. Pakistani Islamist terrorist organizations and their splinter groups are indecisive about responding to the establishment of Caliphate as achieving Caliphate is one of their primary objectives. The Islamic State has managed to achieve scores of victories against standing armies of Syria and Iraq and controls a territory almost the size of Belgium. The size of the areas under Islamic States appear to grow even further as weak states like Iraq and Syria are in no position to defend their own territories. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) the most dangerous of all Pakistani Islamist jihadi groups have responded cautiously. The TTP has neither rejected ISIS’s claims nor approved of it. The TTP and a plethora of other Islamist terrorist groups active in Pakistan have a strong and long standing relationship with Al-Qaeda.  Since ISIS was once part of Al-Qaeda[1]  and used to be an Al-Qaeda franchise, therefore, joining hands with ISIS despite ISIS’s tremendous record of successes perhaps creating problems for Pakistani Islamist groups especially the TTP. Another reason which could allow at least some groups to join ISIS would be rifts and factional fighting within TTP. Rifts among various different factions, located in both settled and tribal districts (7 tribal districts and 5 Frontier regions) of Pakistan, appear to have grown to unprecedented levels. The establishment of Jamaatal-Ahrar by renegade TTP leader Omar Khalid Khurasani in September 2014 is reflective of internal conflicts within TTP[2]. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was established as an agglomerate of 27 different Islamist violent non-state actors (ranging from small terrorist groups of 200-300 in number to large insurgents as big as 5000-7000 strong) in August 2007 under...

A Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) revenge strike was expected since the army launched the Operation Zarb-e-Azb in North Waziristan on June 15. As the army focused increasingly on Waziristan and the Khyber region and exuded triumphant confidence, the TTP carried out the lethal attack last month at the India-Pakistan border, killing at least 60 people watching a flag-lowering ceremony. The month of Muharram passed relatively peacefully, prompting many of us to empirically conclude that the graph of violent acts had come down considerably. But as it turned out with the Peshawar mayhem, the TTP, though badly bruised by the combination of the Operation Zarb-e-Azb and the CIA-led drone campaign which saw about a dozen strikes between mid June and early this month, had something else up its sleeves. Not only is the Peshawar Army Public School attack a typical target killing – the target being an installation associated with the Pakistan army – but also an attempt to strike fear into the minds of people at large, creating panic and uncertainty. That is a simple terror tactic that groups such as the TTP or its new branches like Jamaatul Ahrar and Jundullah deploy as part of their destructive agendas. The tactic may be surprising, but the attack is not  If the events of the last few weeks were an indication, the Peshawar attack was in the making ever since. Jundullah, a splinter group of TTP, pledged support for the Islamic State (IS) after the local leaders met a three-member IS delegation led by al Zubair al Kuwaiti in mid November. The group’s spokesman Fahad Marwat had told reporters (according to a couple of national newspapers) that the IS “are our brothers”. “Whatever plan they have, we will support them.” Taliban sources had told local media that the delegation from Syria came to Pakistan via Baluchistan in November and met with some Taliban commanders. The delegation, they said, asked for recruits for the war in Syria and Iraq. They also met with Afghan Taliban in...

The Taliban terrorists attacked the Army Public School (APS) in Peshawar on December 16, 2014, killing 142, including 132 children. The national tragedy united political actors, religious organizations, the military and every segment of the general public against this horrendous act and the rising tide of terrorism. Cognizant of this public bloodlust and demand for justice, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced an end to the moratorium on the death penalty that had been in force in the country since the time of the Pakistan People’s Party’s government. This decision may directly affect the 8,261[1] death row prisoners incarcerated in the nearly 5 dozen or so jails across Pakistan, which include those convicted of terrorism-related incidents. To understand the implications of this decision and weigh its costs and benefits, Dawn newspaper spoke to Ahmer Bilal Soofi, an international law specialist, and asked him what he felt was going to be the outcome of this decision. Q: What was the legal status of the moratorium on the death penalty and what impact will its lifting have on the dispensation of justice in Pakistan? A: The legal position is that capital punishment is still part of the law, which means that as long as parliament does not amend the law, Pakistan is under no obligation not to carry out sentences awarded under it. International legal obligations that Pakistan is a signatory to, such as international conventions, do not pressure Pakistan into not executing those who have been tried and found guilty. So far, we were holding back as a courtesy, or in the hope of certain perceived economic benefits (in terms of the GSP Plus status afforded by the European Union). But the consequences of holding back have now become too great for this moratorium to continue. In every country, the criminal justice system is linked to a sense of equilibrium: you can either reform the individual or bring them to justice. In the absence of the death penalty, the criminal...