At least 10 policemen were reported martyred and 12 others injured on Wednesday when terrorists ambushed a police party conducting an operation against illegal gold mining in Kohat. Merely hours later, the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement. Another group of men serving the country has paid a dreadful price for doing its duty, this time while confronting an illicit trade that police say has become entangled with terrorist and criminal networks.
Barely a day earlier, the district administration had imposed restrictions on excavators and the supply of fuel used for unauthorised mining. That a police contingent should come under such a ferocious attack while enforcing these measures says much about the interests at stake. Terrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has long drawn strength from extortion, smuggling and criminal networks. The Kohat attack therefore raises troubling questions about the local protection networks that allow such groups to survive.
Terrorist outfits have stepped up attacks on security forces in the region in recent months. Seven policemen were injured in an attack on a Kohat checkpost on October 7. A police officer was martyred in Bajaur last month, while two policemen lost their lives in Mohmand only last week. The September attack on Kohat Police Lines, which claimed 23 lives, had already demonstrated the lengths to which terrorists were prepared to go to strike at Pakistan’s security institutions. The police, working alongside the armed forces and intelligence agencies, have been holding a particularly dangerous line.
The question of where the TTP finds sanctuary has been answered often enough. In August, a UN monitoring report stated that the Afghan Taliban continued supporting the group, contributing to an escalation in attacks against Pakistan. Earlier assessments documented access to operational space, training facilities and logistical assistance on Afghan territory. Kabul’s repeated denials have become increasingly difficult to reconcile with these independent findings. How much more evidence does the Afghan Taliban leadership require before it accepts responsibility for stopping armed groups operating from territory under its control? The distinction between the gunman and his facilitator offers little comfort to a policeman’s grieving family. Pakistan has repeatedly sought assurances from Kabul and raised the matter through diplomatic channels.
Those assurances must now be measured against concrete action to dismantle TTP infrastructure. Counterterrorism operations must continue with the intelligence, equipment and institutional coordination necessary to deny militants room to regroup. Equally important is choking off their financial lifelines, identifying those who profit from illegal extraction and ensuring that local facilitators face prosecution. Pakistan’s quarrel is with terrorists and those who harbour them, certainly not with ordinary Afghans who have endured decades of conflict themselves. Yet no government can reasonably expect cordial relations with its neighbours while armed organisations use its territory to spread violence across the border.
