Noor Wali Mehsud, the emir of the TTP.
The Movement of the Taliban (TTP) in Pakistan killed 11 Pakistani soldiers, including two officers, in an ambush in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa last night. Pakistani officials blamed the attack on the “Indian Proxy, Fitna al Khwarij.” However, the accusation is an attempt to redirect the responsibility for violence toward India and mask Pakistan’s role in the formation of and support for the Afghan Taliban and its spinoff, TTP.
The Pakistani troops were conducting an “an intelligence based operation” in the district of Arakzai, a traditional Taliban stronghold, when they battled the jihadist force, according to the Pakistani military’s Inter-Services Public Relations division. The commander of the Pakistani unit, a lieutenant colonel, his deputy, a major, and nine soldiers, as well as “nineteen Indian sponsored khwarij [heretical Muslims]” were killed “during the intense fire exchange,” the ISPR stated.
Arakzai is the base of operations for Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a dangerous branch of the TTP that has close ties to Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. The group was led by Omar Khalid Khorasani until he was killed in a roadside bombing in eastern Afghanistan in August 2022. Khorasani, who is thought to have given sanctuary to former Al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri, had called for a global jihad and attacks on the US and openly celebrated the terrorist attack on the US on September 11, 2001.
The TTP has stepped up attacks in Pakistan, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, since a ceasefire with the Pakistani government was cast aside in November 2022. That agreement was brokered by the Afghan Taliban, which shelters and supports the TTP. “And now our revenge attacks will continue in the whole country,” the TTP said when it ended its ceasefire with the Pakistani government.
Pakistan complicit in the formation and continuing support of the TTP
The Pakistani government and military began referring to the TTP as the Fitna al Khwarij and described it as an “Indian proxy” starting in 2024, as TTP attacks in Pakistan escalated. Pakistan is quick to blame India for its jihadist woes and has attempted to brand the TTP as an Indian creation.
However, Pakistan is directly responsible for the rise of the TTP. Pakistan has supported the Afghan Taliban since its inception in 1994 and used the group to bolster its “strategic depth”—both geographically in Afghanistan and as a fighting force—against its primary enemy, India.
Pakistan continued to support the Afghan Taliban, even in the wake of the group sheltering and supporting Al Qaeda after the latter attacked the US on September 11, 2001, and the US subsequently invaded Afghanistan. Pakistan purported to be the ally of the US even as the Pakistani state secretly provided the Afghan Taliban a safe haven and material support.
Pakistani jihadists in what used to be known as the tribal areas that bordered Afghanistan were inspired by the Afghan Taliban and its jihad to reestablish the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and they formed the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan in late 2006. The TTP, which seeks to establish its own Islamic emirate in Pakistan, was created with the support and approval of the Afghan Taliban, Al Qaeda, and a host of Pakistani terror groups that are supported by the Pakistani state, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harakat ul Mujahidin.
The TTP immediately launched a deadly insurgency in northwestern Pakistan, as well as terror attacks throughout Pakistan’s major cities. The TTP came as close as 60 miles to the capital of Islamabad when it seized control of Buner in 2009. Upwards of 100,000 Pakistani soldiers, policemen, and civilians were killed in TTP attacks and subsequent Pakistani military operations that devastated much of the northwest. It took the Pakistani military more than a decade to drive the TTP underground.
After Pakistani military operations defeated the TTP’s control of large areas of the country’s northwest, the TTP largely regrouped in neighboring Afghanistan. In late 2024, the United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team noted that the TTP “continues to operate at significant scale in Afghanistan and to conduct terrorist operations into Pakistan from there” with the support of the Afghan Taliban, and “the bonds [between the two groups] are close.”
The Pakistani military and government were acutely aware that the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani state-sponsored terror groups directly supported the TTP. The emir of the TTP has even claimed that his group “is a branch of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” Yet the Pakistani government continued to support the Afghan Taliban in its quest to reestablish the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which it succeeded at doing in August 2021 when US forces withdrew from Afghanistan.