Jundullah found a home in Pakistan's tribal regions about three years ago, aligning itself with the toxic mix of up to 150 militant groups that inhabit the area, say analysts and former military officials. It has gone from relative obscurity, garnering only the occasional mention in jihadi publications, to a dangerous force, said Amir Rana, whose Pakistan Institute for the Study of Peace monitors militant groups here.
It claimed responsibility for the slaying of 11 climbers from Russia, China and the Ukraine in June and an attack on an intelligence office in southern Sindh province.
Rana described Jundullah as a cell of the larger Pakistani Taliban organization known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban, or TTP. He said there are about 11 such cells, each with different names and with diverse tasks. Others say the central command of the TTP fragmented long ago, and the various militant groups under its banner, while bound by ideology, differ in strategy and tactics.
The former police inspector general in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, where Peshawar is the capital, said there is no cohesion among the insurgent groups, but they are loosely aligned with each other and with al-Qaida.
Galvanized by the brutality of Sunday's attack, Muslim and non-Muslim Pakistanis staged protests throughout the country. Politicians who have advocated unconditional peace talks with militants began to urge caution.
“A routine condemnation for this incident is just not enough,” Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, who is in charge of security forces, told lawmakers Monday.
Still after nearly three months in power, the government remains vague about how to tackle the proliferation of militant groups. One military official told The Associated Press that it is still waiting for the government to give direction to the war on terror: Is it fight or talk?
He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the often adversarial relationship between Pakistan's military and its civilian governments.
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