Pakistan: Taliban beheading

We have all known that the military operations being waged by the army against the militants in North Waziristan and Khyber Agency were going to have some measure of blowback. We saw the devastation in Wagah on November 4 but there are incidents taking place on a smaller but no less savage scale that should be looked at and understood as a clear and present threat. Taliban militants have beheaded a tribesman in Tirah Valley of the Khyber Agency the other day on the charge of spying for the security agencies. He was executed in full public view and his body strung out on display with strict orders that it not be taken down for an entire day. This is the kind of brutality we have been seeing in places where the Taliban have asserted their control. It is barabaric acts like this that have fed into Operation Zarb-e-Azb in North Waziristan and Operation Khyber-1 in Khyber Agency in the first place. To behead someone in public and leave their corpse hanging in full view is a preferred method of deterrence used by the Taliban for any would be defectors and spies.

. The brutal murder shows that the Taliban are still here and they have not toned down their bloodletting. This is a message to the security forces that the war is far from over and the militants are still asserting their power to control and terrorise the people.

Operation Zarb-e-Azb and Operation Khyber-1 have been real thorns in the side of the militants who were enjoying a free reign over the tribal areas. It is being reported that the leader of another terror group called Lashkar-e-Islam (LI), Mangal Bagh, a particularly ruthless man, has called upon other militant groups to come to his aid in Khyber Agency as a response to the military operation. Tribesmen in the area have been protecting themselves from this militant onslaught and have been fighting with the security forces to beat back the terrorists from their lands. However, the beheading of this tribesman shows that no one is safe, least of all the tribal people who continue fighting against the militants. If anything, such ghastly incidents ought to work to further strengthen the resolve of the security agencies and the tribesmen who fight alongside the army. The Taliban and other militant groups have made a mockery of the state’s writ and have spread their bloodlust far and wide. We must keep striving for their obliteration, otherwise such occurrences will proliferate and become the norm.