Menhit
Regular Member
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2013
- Messages
- 126
- Likes
- 68
Source: Taliban Tighten Grip on Pakistan's Commercial Hub - WSJ.com
The Pakistani Taliban are a national threat, with Karachi providing the group a vital financial lifeline. Money raised in Karachi from extortion, land-grabbing, kidnapping and robberies is sent to the group's leadership in the tribal areas along the Afghan border, security officials said.
The January assassination of Karachi's most prominent counterterrorism police officer, Chaudhry Aslam, showcased the militants' reach and had a chilling effect on the police force, officers said.
"Everyone now is at a loss about who will step into Chaudhry Aslam's shoes," said Omar Shahid Hamid, a senior counterterrorism officer now on leave. "He had become a symbol, someone who is standing up to [Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan]
More than 13,000 people have been arrested in the sweep since September, in more than 10,000 raids by police and the paramilitary Rangers force, the provincial Sindh government said. But officials and residents said it has left largely untouched the poor outlying neighborhoods that remain under TTP control, encircling the city, including one adjacent to the new U.S. Consulate compound.
TTP dominates 33 of Karachi's 178 administrative units—known as union councils— security officials said. These tend to be the larger, peripheral, districts, with ever expanding shanty settlements that eat into the surrounding desert. The militants are also now getting more educated recruits, including non-Pashtuns, and spreading to neighboring areas outside Karachi, including Hub to the west and Jamshoro to the northeast.
In the areas it controls, TTP is levying a tax on residents and businesses, said a businessman in Sohrab Goth, a Taliban-run neighborhood just north of the city center.
The militant group has set up courts in neighborhoods to resolve disputes, which give written judgments, handling matters that include disagreements over land ownership and regulating levels of theft from power lines that they allow, residents said."The Taliban milk money from their own communities," the businessman said. "They have calculated the worth of every person here.
