Abu Tariq (who, some reports indicate, is in fact spokesman Muslim Khan), has since May 21, when his killing was announced, talked to the media on several occasions. On May 21, Lala also contacted the media to prove he was alive. Notwithstanding such controversies, the TTP leadership has all gone underground, with some moving into Afghanistan. While some cadres have melted into the IDP camps, others have just trekked to the mountains or to other parts of Pakistan, retaining their capacity to strike at will. The retaliatory campaign in Lahore, Peshawar, Islamabad, and other parts is a testimony to this. On its part, the Government has claimed that the second and third rung TTP leadership has been eliminated from Swat while the top ones, including Fazlullah, have escaped to SouthWaziristan.
Central to the TTP retaliation is Peshawar, which is now relentlessly being attacked. Two days after the PC was bombed, there were another two attacks in the provincial capital, including one in the same area. While a man was killed and 13 others, including nine Policemen, sustained injuries in a hand grenade-cum-suicide attack on a Police party in the Lateefabad area on Ring Road, two suspects were killed and six others arrested as troops foiled a audacious terrorist attack at the house of Peshawar Corps Commander, Lt. Gen. Masood Aslam, commander of the operations against the TTP in NWFP, on Khyber Road. Incidentally, the boundary wall of his residence had collapsed due to the suicide bombing at PC. Further, on June 11, Mian Nisar Gul Kakakhel, the Minister for Prisons in NWFP, sustained bullet injuries while two of his security guards died when militants attacked his car in Darra Adam Khel area, some 35 kilometers from Peshawar. One of three attackers was reportedly killed in the exchange of fire.
Since military operations were launched in NWFP on April 26, there have been 29 terrorism-related incidents in Peshawar, including three suicide attacks, with a total of at least 83 persons, including 51 civilians and 21 militants, killed and 236 persons wounded. Earlier, between January 1 and April 25, there were 28 incidents in Peshawar in which 31 persons, including 12 civilians and 11 militants, died and 52 persons were injured. Within the Frontier, they have also targeted places like Lakki Marwat, Kohat, Buner, Hangu, Dera Ismail Khan and Haripur.
The TTP have also attacked other urban areas, including, repeatedly, the national capita, Islamabad and the Punjab provincial capital, Lahore. There have been four terrorist attacks in Punjab since April 26: the May 27th attack when suicide bombers detonated a vehicle loaded with 100 kilograms of explosives near offices of the Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) and the Inter-Services Intelligence in Lahore killing at least 27 persons and injuring 326 others; the suicide attack on June 6 targeting a Rescue 15 office in capital Islamabad, in which two Policemen were killed and four others injured; and the June 12 suicide attack in Lahore in which seven persons were killed.
There is a wave of violence, from both sides, sweeping across Pakistan. On June 12, prominent anti-TTP cleric Maulana Sarfaraz Naeemi was among seven persons killed in a suicide bombing at the Jamia Naeemia seminary in Lahore. Naeemi was among those clerics who had issued an edict on October 14, 2008, declaring suicide attacks against Muslims and civilians as haram (forbidden). In another blast at around the same time, five worshippers were killed and 105 sustained injuries when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden van into a mosque during the Friday prayers in the Cantonment area of Nowshera in NWFP.
There is a squeeze factor at work here. The military operations have, in fact, led to a dispersal of violence. If the situation worsens in the days to come, the SFs will definitely be over-extended. For instance, while the military offensive in six out of the sevendistricts of Malakand Division continues, operations have also been launched in adjacent areas. Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) has indicated that the Janikhel area in Bannu is a staging post for militants operating in Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Kohat and Peshawar.