The Transformation of TTP: Rise, Fall and Resurgence

Abstract

Following Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a network of anti-Pakistan militant groups, has emerged as the main security challenge for Pakistan and a major bone of contention with the Taliban regime. Contrary to Pakistan’s wishful thinking, the Taliban termed TTP’s militancy as Pakistan’s internal matter and refused to take any meaningful action except facilitating negotiations. Pakistan’s two short-lived peace deals (November-December 2021 and June-October 2022) midwifed by the Taliban, collapsed due to TTP’s reluctance to disarm itself, abide by Pakistan’s constitutional framework and pursue its ideological goals through political means instead of violence. Since its resurgence, TTP has recreated its foothold in the Newly Merged Districts (NMDs) and undermined state’s writ in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s southern districts. Before its reemergence, the group suffered significant leadership and organisational losses, leaving it weak, in the wake of the military operations Zarb-e-Azab in 2014 and Radd-ul-Fasad in 2017. Under the Taliban’s protection, the militant group has reinvented itself by imitating the Taliban’s insurgency model and restructuring its organisation, revamping the strategic communication through improved propaganda capabilities and switching from indiscriminate to discriminate targeting strategy and forging cooperation through mergers and alliances. Against this backdrop, this paper chronologically examines the emergence, rise, downfall and resurgence of TTP, using lifecycles theories of terrorist groups and conceptual literature on how terrorism ends, specifically the work of Dipak K. Gupta and Martha Crenshaw.