Suicide bomber blows up a peace agreement

Aftermath of the Parachinar bombing

What is now left of the peace deal signed last October between Sunni and Shia tribesmen in the strategically important Kurram Agency in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas? On 17 February a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the Kurmi Bazaar in Kurram's main town Parachinar, near the Imambargah, killing more than 40 Shia worshippers.
The bombing was claimed by Fazal Saeed Haqqani, who runs the Tehreek-e-Taliban Islami, a sectarian breakaway faction of the TTP. Haqqani was quoted as saying: “We have targeted the Shia community of Parachinar because they were involved in activities against us,” adding, “We had warned the political administration previously not to side with Tooris (the local Shia tribe)... We caught a man yesterday who was planting a bomb at a petrol station owned by a Sunni. We did it in response.”
Part of the reason the peace agreement was signed - and backed by the Pakistan military - was that this part of Kurram is one of the main entry points for militants trying to get into Afghanistan from Pakistan. The ongoing sectarian conflict between the local Toori tribesmen, who are Shias, and Sunni tribesmen from surrounding tribes, made it difficult for fighters from the Haqqani Network to use this route into Afghanistan.
A truce was initially agreed last February and then a peace agreement was signed on 9 October last year by 25 elders from each side at a tribal jirga held in Parachinar under the auspices of political agent Shahuddin Shahab. With the recent bombing, events are back to square one.

Understanding the Pak Army offensive in Kurram

A timely report from Jeffrey Dressler at the Institute for the Study of War on the Pakistan Army's current offensive in Kurram in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) says that the insurgency in Afghanistan's Eastern region is likely to benefit from the action.
Dressler explains that the action is aimed at curbing the activities of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), whose supporters have been involved in the capture and murder of Shias living in the region, while giving more freedom to the Haqqani network to launch attacks into Afghanistan.
The Shias live in parts of Kurram that control access to Afghanistan, which explains why the Haqqani network - which is strongly supported by the Pakistani military - spent months negotiating a peace agreement with them so that the Shias could travel safely through surrounding Sunni areas - in exchange for transit rights for Haqqani fighters to Afghanistan. Unlike the TTP, which directs much of its activities towards the Pakistani state, the Haqqanis are oriented towards fighting in Afghanistan and rely heavily on the Pakistani Army and ISI for political and financial support.  Their agreement with the Shias was put in jeopardy by the actions of local TTP commanders who continued to target Shias for purely sectarian reasons.
Dressler points out that the Pakistani military action is targeting only selected pockets of militants, while groups that have recently declared a truce with the Pakistani military or are aligned with elements of the security establishment are allowed room to expand. These include, for example, Fazal Saeed's group. Saeed - who has added the name Haqqani to his own - announced in June that he was defecting from the TTP and setting up a new organisation - see my report on this development here. He denounced the TTP for using suicide bombers to attack "mosques, markets and other civilian targets" and said he was redirecting his followers to cross the border and fight in Afghanistan.
Dressler makes it clear that the Pakistani military has little interest in curbing militancy in the region. It is simply taking on those elements of the TTP that have turned on their former mentors, solely in order to strengthen the insurgency in Afghanistan.

Pakistan Taliban begins to break up

The leader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban, Hakimullah Mahsud, has been isolated for much of the last year and is rapidly losing control of his organisation, according to news reports  from Pakistan.
A report in the Express Tribune, for example, notes that there was a large split from the organisation  recently, when Fazal Saeed Haqqani - in charge of the TTP in the Kurram tribal region - announced that he was leaving the organisation, along with around 1,000 of his fighters. Haqqani said he was opposed to the killing of civilians. The TTP has killed hundreds of civilians in a series of indiscriminate bombings throughout Pakistan in the last two years.
Just days before, Shakirullah Shakir, the main spokesman for the TTP's Fidayeeen-e-Islam suicide squad, was gunned down in in the Qutab Khail area of Miranshah in North Waziristan while riding his motorcycle to Mir Ali. No-one claimed responsibility for the targetted killing, but it is likely that the two events are connected. Shakir was a close aide to Qari Hussein Mahsud, the TTP's main organiser of suicide bombings.
Haqqani said he had decided to form a new organisation called Tehreek-e-Taliban Islami that will concentrate on fighting in Afghanistan: "“I repeatedly told the leadership council of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan that they should stop suicide attacks against mosques, markets and other civilian targets,” Haqqani told the AFP news agency by telephone.
“Islam does not allow killings of innocent civilians in suicide attacks,” he said, likening what TTP does in Pakistan to “what US troops are doing in Afghanistan” and vowing to continue the fight alone against the Americans.
There have also been reports of fighting between TTP factions in Khyber and Orakzai districts in recent weeks.