Pakistani Taliban explain how they successfully evaded the army’s offensive in South Waziristan and counter-attacked with large-scale terror attacks in the Punjab. Key component: The peace deal the army struck with Taliban leaders in North Waziristan.
According to militant sources, they claimed to have outmaneuvered the armed forces when they struck the peace deal with two Taliban groups including commander Gul Bahadur and commander Mullah Nazir from the Shakai region of South Waziristan.
Before he was killed in a drone attack in August , Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud had urged Gul Bahadur to retain the long running agreement with the military as he believed it would help militants escape through the region in the case of a military operation.
Baitullah Mehsud was killed but his strategy worked when the Pakistan army came with full force to destroy the sanctuaries of the Taliban.
Most of the militants had already left the area and settled in North Waziristan.
From there they regrouped and made their base in the Orakzai tribal region from where they carried out attacks in Peshawar.
Once they had consolidated their positions around Peshawar, the TTP gave the green light to its Punjab cells who carried out the attacks in Rawalpindi, Lahore and now in Multan.
Meanwhile, Nawaz Sharif continues to pander to popular self-delusions by hypothesizing in public about Indian involvement in the recent Lahore blast.
