Pakistan has seen an upsurge in terrorist attacks since the Taliban retook power in neighbouring Afghanistan in August 2021. A large proportion of these attacks are carried out by the TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, against security forces. Faced with this new threat, the Pakistani police are now taking on the role of a counter-terrorism force. They must not only maintain law and order, but also protect themselves from terrorist attacks. Our correspondents report.
A top a police outpost in northwest Pakistan, Faizanullah Khan stands behind a stack of sandbags and peers through the sight of an anti-aircraft gun, scanning the terrain along the unofficial boundary with the country’s restive former tribal areas.
On this cold and rainy February morning, he was looking not for aircraft but for Islamist fighters behind attacks against his force, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provincial police.
It was daytime, so he could relax a bit, said Khan, an assistant sub-inspector, as he sat down on a traditional woven bed. But night was a different story, he said, pointing to pock marks left by bullets fired at the outpost, named Manzoor Shaheed, or Manzoor the Martyr, after a colleague felled by insurgents years ago.
Source: News365
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